Josephine is approximately the fourteenth album from Jason Molina, who was releasing songs as Songs: Ohia, then as a solo artist, and now as Magnolia Electric Co. - the name coming from the title of the final album by...Songs: Ohia (!). Molina's back-catalogue seems of a similar persuasion and size as the careers of Bill Callahan and Will Oldham.

Sadly, Josephine is one of those albums that was born from a tragic experience, being both a reaction and tribute to Magnolia Electric Co's bassist Evan Farrell who died in a house-fire in December 2007. So this is one of those albums like Astral Weeks, Funeral, Magic and Loss, and Tonight's the Night where the dark association of death is inescapable. This is quite heavy stuff, though as Journal for Plague Lovers demonstrates, this association doesn't always make a great record.

Josephine is the long-player companion to the earlier e.p. It's Made Me Cry, which contained three tracks as great as the best here (not included) and an alternate version of 'Rock of Ages' (a couple of quid well worth paying to download, and some proceeds are going to the fund for Evan Farrell).

Josephine is also another record 'recorded by' (which roughly translates as engineered and produced by) Steve Albini, who as well as helming disappointing records by Jarvis Cocker and the Manics, was also behind this year's spellbinding Hymn to the Immortal Wind by Mono. Listening to the quite poor opener 'O! Grace' you wonder what Albini's doing working on a record that has a piano-motif reminiscent of Bruce Hornsby & the Range; but it should be noted that Albini has 'recorded' everything by Nina Nastasia which veers off into country and folk climes, as well as Joanna Newsom's Ys . Albini is often more subtle than some of the records he's associated with, be they his own (Big Black, Rapeman, Shellac) or harsh classics like Goat, In Utero, or Tweez.

The majority of Josephine feels analogous to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's classic I See a Darkness; songs like 'Hope Dies Last' and 'Shenandoah' sounding very country, but also very other. My favourite track is probably 'The Handing Down' which sounds like an imaginary record by Neil Young & Low, this one sounds like an epic and really should be longer than it's 3-odd minutes! I'd love to hear an endless live version - though its incarnation here is as strong as the best moments on the Albini produced Viva Lost Blues. 'Little Sad Eyes', meanwhile seems to tap into the same soulful country of Wilco's A Ghost is Born...

One strange feature of the album is that several songs have titles that seem to either be traditional or cover versions - 'The Rock of Ages', 'Knoxville Girl', 'Shiloh' - they don't appear to be, but there is a connection to a certain tradition and you're sent back to something like The Harry Smith Folk Anthology, blues lyrics, or the terrain discussed in Greil Marcus' fantastic Invisible Republic.

Josephine and its companion e.p., like at least 18 albums by Dylan are records to live by - I have a suspicion that like records like Astral Weeks and Tonight's the Night it will something that is both a celebration and consolation when a death occurs. A definite contender for the best of 2009 and the best record Molina has been associated with in a long-time; a soundtrack for both death and life…

Oh, and for reference the eighteen Dylan albums I'm thinking of are Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, New Morning, Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, Desire, Street Legal, Slow Train Coming, Saved, Oh Mercy, Good As I Been To You, World Gone Wrong, Time Out of Mind, and Love and Theft.