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Aug 14, 2020Eight Gates is an album of uncommon beauty, cracked and imperfect but ultimately a strong, cogent artistic statement. It's also a stark reminder of Molina's massive artistic skill and will likely cause most listeners to wonder what else he could have accomplished had he lived long past his brief 39 years.
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Aug 7, 2020It's just a short but compelling set of songs from a singular artist, and however it made its way to a public hearing, listeners can only be grateful it has emerged at last.
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Aug 7, 2020These songs, Molina’s living animals, continue to make their way through the world, ensuring that their creator’s legacy lives on.
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Aug 7, 2020It is inevitably an unfinished work. Studio banter is left in and some songs are mercilessly brief or feel like sketches. Nevertheless, its spacious textures, starkness and the emphasis on Molina’s understated but haunting vocal delivery mean that this music provides a window into Molina’s working process and creates a moving intimacy. It is like listening to the voices of ghosts.
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Aug 6, 2020With its minimal instrumentation and bare, veiled lyrics, Eight Gates feels less like a complete record than a part of the creative process that would have ultimately resulted in a more realized collection of songs. In this sense, it doesn’t stack up to the same artistic level as any album from Songs: Ohia, Magnolia Electric Co., or even Molina’s 2012 solo album. Instead, it provides a fleeting final snapshot of an artist who was broken and seeking reflection on his sick and troubled state of being. For longtime fans of Molina, Eight Gates offers a sense of closure and insight on where he was artistically and mentally during the last years of his life.
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Aug 6, 2020Eight Gates presents him as a living being, troubled and troublesome, which might seem like a minor accomplishment but is actually closer to profound given what we know of his life after these sessions. Most of all, it reinforces Molina as an artist rather than as someone overtaken by demons, as a flawed man rather than the myth he often made himself out to be. [Sep 2020, p.38]
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MojoAug 6, 2020Short, spellbinding, almost painfully beautiful album. [Sep 2020, p.96]
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Q MagazineAug 6, 2020Reminders of a great talent lost, and what might have been. [Sep 2020, p.111]
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The WireNov 6, 2020Though not all the tracks are fully realised, Molina was clearly pushing into new territory: that he never got there is a tragedy. [Sep 2020, p.57]
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Aug 12, 2020Regardless of his or his label’s intentions, it’s possible to hear Eight Gates as a fitting tribute. In its blank spaces, it reflects the spectral quality of his greatest music, albeit sometimes for different reasons.