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It took me ten years but I tracked him down and just in time to find his first album readying for release. Jason Molin appeared in Dublin like an angel beyond coincidence in late 1992. One evening in my living room he told me he had written a few songs. Sometimes that is the prelude to something truly awful but he took out his old scratchy guitar and started singing; it mesmerized me for the best part of a year. Brought up in Washingston DC and studying in New York there was a Woody Guthrie feel about his three chords and philosophizing. I got him gigs whenever I could. Then he left and we lost touch. Years of Google searching uncovered nothing but a boring web nerd of the same name who has brown hair, hazel eyes and weighs 250lbs; our only connection is a love for Pac Man!

Then one last effort and I scrolled way down the search results and discovered an album had a backing vocalist with the same name in Austin Texas. It’s a long way from DC. An e-mail was sent with, “it is hardly likely but could your Jason Molin have…” and within a couple of hours Molin was in my in-tray, just married, studying in Austin, making loads of music and doing very badly at getting his web page any recognition in the world’s search engines!

So he sent me the album which is about to be released. The ten years of myth had built some expectation…maybe too much expectation. What would ten years do to a man’s writing? Would he deliver when studio gadgets and tricks became available? How would he produce those raw emotional and often humorous songs that dealt dilemmas to the heart, soul and mind? Would I think I had been better off searching than finding? Well I should have trusted my initial hunches. When Molin sang in my living room there was a quality to what he was doing both in content and in style that could not have been eroded. 

_J Songs_ is a quality piece of work that has me wondering how many other songwriters are there out there who do this so far out in the margins yet are this good? Jason Molin has the attention to detail of a Bruce Cockburn and the Greenwich village spirit of a young Bob Dylan. Tom Waits’ quirk lurks in the songwriting style and he has a voice with a mature grittiness when needed and goes pure and true on the one or two occasions when necessary; it is flexible, individual and very, very good. 

In the third millennium songwriters are never allowed to do it straight being driven to clever sounds and beats and trendy postmodern gimmicks. Molin takes to these arranging obligations very subtly indeed. He never compromises the organic nature of his muse but throws piles of shades and fades and dies to keep it more than colorful. Imagine if Damien Rice used brass not strings. "For Your Lover" is a gentle breezy calypso meets folk; the holiday observational piece’s "Room 304" and "Road to Monterrey" both take you on sunny locations; "Aphrodisiac" is a moody seductive groove which is just as well as love is the aphrodisiac; "Jesus Rode a Bike" has a twenty first century Subterranean Homesick Blues feel, the most blustery thing here and playfully filled with the spiritual conundrums that waste too much precious time; "Mystical Experience" has the atmosphere expected of it’s title; "Sunday Morning" is more stripped back and can I add that it is the most perfect description of a Sunday morning journey from Trinity College to Adelaide Presbyterian Church - precision of the moment and cinematic flair have never went so well together.

J Songs may be a debut album but don’t be fooled, it is the work of a mature and accomplished writer and performer. This is intelligent songwriting from a man with a plethora of strings to his bow. If the rest of the world doesn’t find it I give myself utter respect that I searched for long enough. 
                                                                                 
Steve Stockman 4/24/2004