I liked Trials and Errors so much more than What Comes After the Blues. It wasn't that it was live, but it was that there was a satisfying and rich crunchy guitar sound. I am a sucker for whatever this sound is... it isn't tube amp, it isn't distortion necessarily... it surely springs from some Neil Young root.

Although lower on my top twenty of last year, I keep reaching for Son Volt to play...more than most of last year.... this has that thing I am looking for..much more than the much superior Wilco stuff of the last ten years.

I thought Pedro the Lion was always overrated.... but Control has some of it I am looking for...

What the hell am I looking for? Still haven't found (enough of) it....

Slobberbone? Lucero?

I'm just now getting into Magnolia Electric Co. for some reason. I even had to look up those albums to realize it was them.

I keep going back to that MEC record from last year. Good stuff.

I don't really know how I missed them. I'm thinking it's because I caught a couple of the really slow songs, so I just never got too interested. But I like most of what I've heard so far.

Lucero is too Lynard Skynard, and the guy's voice is annoying. Slobberbone is pleasingly cornpone, but the sound is too thin and too frantic....

The rich guitar sound I am trying to pin down almost has a calming effect... think Neil Young on Cortex the Killed

It's about time. I've been wondering why more of you guys who are into DBT, Lucero, and the like weren't into MEC. Definitely get the Songs: Ohia - Magnolia Electric Co. album (or the s/t MEC as I like to think of it). Much better than What Comes After the Blues.

I don't really have anything to offer harry here except that I also find that guy from Lucero's voice to be annoying.

Another live album, and one I just got last week, has it, I think:

I love a lot of Molina's stuff through 'til Pyramid Electric Co., but I cannot get into this new band/identity. I was disappointed live, and I hate it on record.

Doesn't Molina play baritone guitar. If not in recent work, definitely on older releases.

You might find similar guitar tones in Idaho, and deeper in Low.

Yeah, I like Idaho and Low... but they kinda trend more toward the Friends of Dean Martinez, Giand Sand, Mermen lost-and-lonely desert-surf guitar.

There I fixed it for you.

I agree that the Songs: Ohia album titled Magnolia Electric Co. (confusing isn't it?) is the best MECo style stuff Molina has done.

By far!

Ha. Apples and oranges actually I guess.

Listen to Via Chicago late some night... it's a classic rock song in the way nothing else is that Farrar has done. Tweedy writes better songs. Better lyrics and melodies. Farrar crunches out some gut satisfying licks. Too bad they aren't in the same band.

Tweedy has written some great lyrics most of which I think appear on Being There (which is why I made an exception for that album). He's also written some really Interpol level of bad lyrics as well. I've also noticed that just about every Uncle Tupelo song that I think is a weaker one was a Tweedy contribution. I'll take Farrar as a songwriter any day over Tweedy.

I like all of Molina's work, in any iteration, but only really love his older stuff, the sparser the better. Great mood music that makes me want to curl up with a woman, a drink, and a smoke, with rain falling outside my window.

So for Molina's work, harry, I guess I value the opposite of what you do. Well, maybe not completely . . . The crunch of the guitar on T&E's "the dark don't hide it" is pretty wonderful. Other guitar tones I've been valuing today - the open twang on any Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter tune, and any full frontal fuzzed-out Drive-By Truckers masterpiece. Or how about the in-your-face noise of The Black Keys? Does that do it for you? Or pull out some old Stones and let Keef do his thing? Comets on Fire? Silver Jews? Anything hitting you in a sweet spot?