Ohio band Magnolia Electric Co. perform at Tonic Lounge on May 18

Local songwriters and bands Josh Culpepper, The Stately Gentlemen and Buster Blue accompanied Ohio-based Magnolia Electric Co. on their dark-country descent into Tonic Lounge on Monday.

Josh Culpepper

Culpepper positioned himself as the missing link between Bright Eyes and Bob Dylan, exhibiting songs steeped in myth (”East of Eden”) and stuffed with wild-eyed desire.

He straddled the stage alone but still cast a sweet, shambolic presence in his extended rambles of songs and his shaky voice—shaky as though he feels far too much of the content of his songs.

Culpepper was followed by indie-identity-crisis The Stately Gentlemen, who could be relied on to provide either barrel-scraping classic rock tropes or simple, catchy indie rock depending on when you walked in.

This schizophrenia plagued their set. Yes, their sound is difficult to pin down, and normally this would be an excellent quality were the songs not exploring entirely opposite sonic areas.

When mining their classic rock vein, things got especially abysmal, the earnest scratch of lead singer Joe McMahon’s vocals recalling, of all things, Blueshammer from Ghost World. Insult, meet injury: their lone cover of the night was of Pink Floyd’s most inane late-period attempt at straight “rock,” “Young Lust.” And The Gentlemen’s original classic rock invocations came off similarly.

The Stately Gentlemen

On occasion, they’d play something resembling catchy if inoffensive indie rock, at least one song being an artifact of a long-lost band member. But these only served to further mute their identity, whatever it is—The Stately Gentlemen seemed little more than a directionless cover band who happened to play mostly original songs.

Jason Molina of Magnolia Electric Co.

Ohio-based Magnolia Electric Co. are akin to opening your veins on a raw stretch of highway. Lyrically and sonically they are very much the country rock extension of lead singer and guitarist Jason Molina’s previous project, Songs: Ohia, which staked its depressing claims over acoustic landscapes that were stark and minimal.

While Magnolia’s sound is much fuller, its lyrical bent is no less on the verge of fully breaking. From “Leave This City,” among the songs performed on Monday: “It broke my heart to leave the city / I mean it broke what wasn’t broken in there already.” And yet, clad in an awful Hawaiian shirt and grooving delightedly to each song, Molina could not have delivered this desolation in a happier state.

I had been a fan of both Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. for years. I had felt the bruised hands of their songs take mine and lift me out of the bruisings. So post-show, I approached Molina and held out my hand in return for his services.

“I know you probably get this a lot,” I said. “But your songs have carried me through very dark times.”

He squeezed my hand and said, “Me too.”