Jason Molina was the finest songwriter of the 2000s – a key reason I went into music journalism – and his untimely death 12 years ago, at only 39, still casts long shadows on my walls. His brilliance remains unmatched, and his legacy keeps growing as a new wave of artists looks to him for lyrical and musical inspiration.

MJ Lenderman might be his sharpest student, an emerging star in his own right, and it feels only natural that he’s kicking off I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina, out now on Run For Cover. It’s not the first Molina tribute project of its kind, but it’s a powerful one, with current acts like Horse Jumper of Love, Hand Habits, Runnner and others paying their respect.

Jason Molina grew up a Rust Belt kid in a trailer park outside Lorain, Ohio. As he told me back in 2005: “Steel mills, shipyards, factories, a really beat-up, beat-down town.” By the mid-’90s, he had moved first to Cleveland, then Chicago, to start a lifelong career in music. Whether it was sparse, lo-fi ghost folk as Songs: Ohia or diesel-fueled rock and americana with Magnolia Electric Co., his background and signature always cut through.

He dug into the darkest corners of the human mind. He wrote 21st-century blues about roads and crossroads, ghosts and death, the prairie and the horizon, the moon above and hell below. He wrote of the solitude within and the loneliness around us. He wrote with a heart that bled straight through his shirt, until it didn’t beat anymore.

So please listen to his songs through MJ Lenderman and all these other mighty fine artists, and then dive into Molina’s own vast, haunted universe if you haven’t already. I can’t promise you much, except maybe a new address on the same old loneliness.