In 1996, a Midwesterner named Jason Molina released his debut seven-inch single, cryptically titled Nor Cease Thou Never Now, on Will Oldham’s Palace Records. The most popular story about what happened next goes that some college kids in Indiana heard it and started a record label. Less well-known is the story of a young singer-songwriter halfway around the world: Irish Glen Hansard, then most notable for his role in the 1991 flick The Commitments, heard Cease and became obsessed. He wrote Molina a fan letter and was floored when Molina actually wrote back. The two struck up a friendship that evolved over the years: They toured and even recorded together, including a split seven-inch in 2000.
Molina’s death hit Hansard hard, but he took some solace in his friend’s music, assembling a group of musicians who had played with Molina and jamming. Initially, they had no plans to record, much less release anything, but the sessions went so well that they devised a tribute, and the result of his therapeutic re-immersion is an EP titled It Was Triumph We Once Proposed. Hansard chooses these five tracks as fan more than as a friend, and he wisely gives no thought to comprehensiveness. How could you possibly cover such a productive career in such a short tracklist?
Triumph opens with "Being in Love", from Songs: Ohia’s 2000 album The Lioness. The song isn't one of Molina’s best-known compositions, which only makes its inclusion feel like a discovery. The original is slow, quiet, and intense, with Molina singing about the risks of any relationship over a rusty industrial beat, a churchly organ, and sharp stabs of guitar. Hansard gives the song a classic-rock makeover, transforming Molina’s dark musings into a chorus that sounds just shy of hopeful. "We are proof," he sings, one beat before a guitar crashes through the vocal line, "that the heart is a risky fuel to burn." This is what the song might sound like if Magnolia Electric Co. had recorded it, and it works so well you can almost hear Molina singing along.
Nothing else on Triumph surpasses this nervy cover. Rather than radically rethink the other songs, he wraps them around himself like a warm blanket. On "Hold On Magnolia", his voice wavers slightly as he sings about Molina’s favorite subjects: the road, the moon, the heart, the job at hand. Likewise, "Farewell Transmission" is a sturdy rendition of one of Molina’s most popular songs, with Hansard’s vocals drawing out the measured optimism in the lyrics. Molina is often described as a bleak songwriter, and after his death in 2013, his reputation for facing up to dark truths only intensified. "The real truth about it is no one gets it right," Hansard sings, but he puts even more emphasis on the next line: "The real truth about it is that we’re all supposed to try."
Triumph offers implicit argument that Molina glimpsed the light of morning in the darkest night, and this idea serves as the EP's most powerful tribute. It is also a welcome corrective to the idea that Molina's struggles with addiction and depression can be decoded through his lyrics. Hansard shows us Molina trying to be his best self in his music. The EP builds to an abrupt finale with "Vanquisher" and "White Sulfur", a pair of songs that barely pass the two-minute mark. Hansard closes the record with the line, "So then, I have to be going, okay." At first it sounds like a tearjerker, but Hansard owns the words and directs them toward Molina. It’s powerful not because it reminds us that Molina is gone, but because it makes him feel present once again, if only for a few minutes.
