by Zak Mercado (@ciaoguaglione)
In the year of the passing of Brian Wilson, a question lingered about the head of a passionate listener: “do Brian and The Beach Boys’ music matter anymore?” The average Walgreens shopping experience might say, in the passively piped-in quotidian experience, that they do in the most innocuously ambient way (not to knock “Kokomo” or “California Girls” at all). But what about the ones who pay attention — not just to the beat, not just to the stacked vocals, but to the purest Platonic essence of the Beach Boys? It’s not an elitist experience, but equally enjoyed by the kid paying deep attention to the melody of a Nickelback hit or the structure of a [insert your favorite artist with a low monthly listener count] deep cut.
Tony Molina understands the essence of what Brian Wilson achieved, both melodically and essentially. On his latest record, On This Day, songs like “No Place to Turn” and “Inside Your Mind” literalize and pay homage to the wistful, surrendering, sincere baroque pop Brian Wilson and the gang created. But, as with every Tony Molina creation, the whole rock canon is an open book to be read in all sorts of moods.
Unabashed in continuing on in his own tradition from his recordings in the band Ovens, or 2023’s excellent In The Store by The Lost Days, Molina gives us his songs in neatly packaged fragments. In some ways, it’s the perfect packaging for the “brain rot” era — pieces of songs matter more than ever. But that’s clearly not the intent of Tony’s presentation. Or, if it is, the duality of referencing, understanding, and respecting ‘60s English folk (“Just As The Tide Was Flowing”) and rock (e.g. “Ghosts of Punishment Past”) while catering it to the Tik Tok world feels like a tongue-in-cheek joke, sick work. But his intentions have always felt pure, and the resultant music, superb.
If you haven’t listened to Tony Molina since 2023’s master work Embarrassing Times, this new record may feel like a detour. But if we vivisect Tony’s brain for this apparent shift in music direction, the most recent Lost Days record is the bridge. On that record, there was a clear and arresting mollifying or “softening,” bringing us down from 11 to 8, to a halcyon era of folk and pop. With On This Day, Molina has progressed to more pop and folk but also baroque and lower-fi tones and essences, along with his often visited classical-leaning guitar interludes — revisiting and providing another couple “Ovens Theme” recordings.
Tony Molina is one of the standard bearers of analog jangle pop in this age of increasingly electronic and digital signal based music. While being such, Molina creates space between tracks. Maybe one of his greatest achievements as a member of the “power pop” revival vanguard is that he only really dips into that genre from time to time. On this record, see his power pop-izing of Eric Andersen’s “Violets of Dawn,” and “Have Your Way,” both strong tracks on this record. And he probably is underrated as a constructor of records, many of them clocking in at low-for-an-“album”-length type records, but always containing broad brush strokes of musical interests and shapes.
Ultimately, what Molina is doing feels right and honest—watching himself change paces while working with the same artistic interests, some of which are in the depths of the crate he’s been digging through. It’s at his own pace, in his own way, and feels ever so fresh, despite seemingly treading “old” territory. Much of this can be attributed to his melancholic yet blissful baritone vocal delivery, recontextualizing the ultra-clean and bright recordings he’s referencing. And, in those vocals, especially, he also maintains kinship with Brian Wilson.
The evolution of Tony Molina’s sound is the evolution of interest. The sounds of melody are like fashion; there’s a cyclical nature to the waves and approaches of music. So re-treading the territory of forgotten melody and approaches feels rather special and exciting. When you catch something of great quality so far out of the “zeitgeist,” it must be handled with rapt, deserved attention. On This Day deserves such attention, along with the rest of Tony’s work.