To understand the music of Tony Molina, we should first talk about bonsai.

Bonsai, as an art, proceeds through cuts. The goal: to take something natural (a tree), and trim it down until all that remains is the truth. Unlike miniature dog breeds, bonsai trees are not genetically small. Any seed could grow a bonsai. To get there, it takes an artistic eye, and more than a few snips of the shears.

For the better part of a decade now, Peninsula musician Tony Molina has been crafting what could conceivably be called bonsai rock. Like bonsai, Molina’s art proceeds through cuts. A Molina song might have the catchiest melody you’ve heard in years and end in less than a minute. Choruses stick out like a lone branch hanging in the wind, never to repeat. While certain melodic phrases might sound like something you’ve heard before (Weezer, Dinosaur Jr.), the end result is always strikingly its own.

This week, Molina releases Songs From San Mateo via Oakland label Smoking Room. It is his first collection of B-sides. In making these songs public, Molina has pulled the leaves back a bit, revealing a further part of his pruning process—not just what parts of songs to cut, but what songs themselves were left off of albums like Dissed and Dismissed (2013) and Kill the Lights (2018).

In classic Molina style, Songs From San Mateo is brief. Its 14 tracks barely take up 15 minutes. The longest song, “I’m Not Down” (a perfect example of the “Weezer + Dinosaur Jr.” format) doesn’t even crack two minutes. The shortest (“Intro”) is 14 seconds. Fourth track “Can’t Find My Way,” an immediate highlight, is a 48-second tour through Molina’s entire discography. Tracing a melody similar to last year’s “Jasper’s Theme,” “Can’t Find My Way” ditches the Dylan-esque keyboards and acoustics for the thick fuzz of power chords, exploding at its end into a guitar solo that’s something like Kirk Hammett channeling Andres Segovia. It sort of sounds like a bunch of Tony Molina songs pasted together and then chopped in half. But, then again, so does every Tony Molina song.

“Can’t Find My Way” is followed by “Don’t See the Point,” which similarly caps two verses with a guitar solo, then pulls the plug. Compared to those two songs, “I’m Not Down” is like a rock opera. It even has a full on intro-verse-chorus-bridge structure. Still, a full fourth of the song is dedicated to Molina’s fretwork, as a bridge carries it from the last chorus to another explosive guitar solo.

One of the few clear Kill the Lights outtakes to appear on Songs From San Mateo is “Word Around Town.” With its acoustics and humming organ, it could have easily fit beside the autumnal ennui of songs like “Wrong Town,” or “Give He Take You.” Likewise for the acoustic “Don’t See Me Now,” with its bonsai take on Simon and Garfunkel. The decision to cut these two is especially curious considering Kill the Lights’ 14-minute runtime. Would two more minutes have hurt? Obviously, Molina thought as much, and who are we to say that he was wrong? His trees have grown nicely.

As with every Molina record, the secret star is the production work of Jack Shirley. Over the past decade, the monk-like Shirley has established himself as the Bay Area’s Steve Albini, capturing bands as they sound without getting in the way. Acoustics are lush, pick strokes blend with the natural resonance of the wood, and when things get loud, they get loud.

For those who miss the early Tony—the fuzz-and-feedback days—back when everything sounded kinda like “Only in Dreams,” Songs From San Mateo has what you’re looking for. And along the way, you get a glimpse into an artist’s method—the limbs and leaves which, once cut, reveal the truth.

Songs From San Mateo
Tony Molina
Out Jul 19

Almost every musician I know loves Tony Molina. It’s pretty easy to see why. So far, he’s written nothing but near-perfect songs. The 20 tracks that span his first full length (Dissed and Dismissed) and its follow-up EP (2016’s Confront the Truth) are a wealth of melodies, riffs and leads, with hardly a second of run-time wasted.  

Now, the Peninsula-based musician is back with Kill the Lights. Released on July 27, it’s his first-full length since Dissed and Dismissed appeared on tape back in 2013. “Full length” is, of course, a loose term here, since the album’s 10 tracks fly by in less than 15 minutes. In Molina’s world, the melodies start early and carry the songs through their just-as-early ends.

Take, for example, album highlight “Jaspar’s Theme.” Sounding a bit like full-band Elliott Smith, the tune hits the listener with three razor sharp melodies in a row, dips into a guitar solo and then immediately connects to its outro. For someone familiar with Molina’s work, it’s an example of the clarity of his songwriting, and a particularly good one at that. And at 2:02, it’s also one of the longest songs in his discography.

Molina famously came out of the West Bay’s hardcore scene, and at this point, giving the hardcore treatment to pop songs is already well-worn territory for him. Dissed and Dismissed was a compact pop gem flecked with colors of Weezer, Ozma, and playful bits of Iron Maiden-y shredding. Only half of its 12 tracks exceeded a minute, but all of them established his format of taking a big rock sound and boiling it down to its essence, often bookended by squeals of feedback.

Confront the Truth, it’s 2016 follow-up, was quieter but no less brief. Not only did it shed its predecessor’s characteristic squeals of feedback, there was no distortion on the record whatsoever. Instead, Truth was coated in the gentle purr of an organ, the melodies sounding more like Lennon, Big Star and Elliott Smith, and less like Rivers Cuomo.

For someone whose first record was practically synonymous with shredding guitar leads, this was a change some found disorienting, but it doesn’t take many listens for the througline between both records to become apparent. Though the sonic palette may have shifted dramatically, it was still unmistakably Molina in spirit, skill and voice.

Those core elements are just as present on Kill the Lights. The new record builds on Confront the Truth, and often sound as though Molina is untangling the mess of wires that is classic rock, and repatching it into something more direct.

But make no mistake, there is a lot of classic in this rock. Kill the Lights is one of the few records in recent memory that might bring millennials and their grandparents together. Plenty of AM rock gets run through Molina’s streamlined machine, coming out the other side sounding fresh, almost punk. Album opener “Nothing I Can Say” riffs lightly on the Byrds’ “The Bells of Rhymney” before exploding into pastoral oohs and 12 string leads, encapsulating an entire summer in less than a hundred seconds. It also features the weirdly assertive line, “There’s no such thing as time,” which just might be the hidden mission statement of Molina’s entire project. If time is an illusion, who cares how long the songs are (or what era of pop they’re inspired by), as long as they work? It’s a no-bullshit kind of approach, one that clearly reflects his come up from the Bay Area’s DIY scene.

And on Kill the Lights that’s exactly what you’ll get: no bullshit. If you’re already a fan of Molina, here you’ll find some of his best songs to date. And if you’re new to the club, welcome. Get ready to hit repeat in a few minutes.

Kill the Lights
Tony Molina
Slumberland Records