Molina and Johnson, Molina and Johnson

At least superficially, "Texas music" conjures a plethora of stereotypes — most notably, the well-dressed troubadour playing brawny country songs in a whiskey-splattered honky-tonk. Howdy do! But the wild Texan landscape — from the swampy Gulf coast to the barren, tumbleweeded plains — is almost preternaturally well-suited to the kind of spare, acoustic dirges rolled out by Centro-Matic's Will Johnson and Magnolia Electric Company's Jason Molina on their collaborative debut, Molina and Johnson.

Recorded with their own cash in Argyle, Texas, Molina and Johnson can be genuinely heartbreaking ("Almost Let You In," "Each Star Marks A Day") or, on occasion, toe-curlingly spooky. On "All Gone, All Gone," Johnson's crackly Texas drawl — augmented by singer-songwriter Sarah Jaffe's plaintive guest vocals — is paired with a singing saw; the contrast between Johnson's scratchy pipes and the saw's warbling alternates between nightmarish and beautiful. Opener "Twenty Cycles to the Ground" is the most campfire-friendly track here, with Molina and Johnson's voices melding comfortably over a few acoustic guitar strums and a bit of synthesizer. Because most of these cuts are so stripped down — guitar, maybe a bit of piano, vocals — the chemistry between Molina and Johnson is, by default, the focus of the project — and, happily, it's undeniable.