Juana Molina’s journey is one of the most unexpected
one could imagine. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
Juana grew up surrounded with music. Her father taught
her to play the guitar, and she spent many summers during
her formative years in a house her family shared with
two major figures of Brazilian music, poet and composer
Vinicius de Moraes and bossa superstar Chico Buarque.
After years in exile in Paris following a military coup,
she returned to Argentina and became a singer with various
local bands but as she felt she needed to brush up on
her guitar skills, she set off to look for a job, landed
a part in a television show in 1988, and soon featured
in her own show, Juana Y Sus Hermanas (Juana
& Her Sisters), which rapidly became a hit in many
Spanish-speaking countries across the world and made
her one of the most famous TV personalities in her country.
Juana hadn’t forgotten about her initial dream
and started working on her first album, Rara,
which was released in 1996 by MCA Argentina. She consequently
moved to Los Angeles, playing in small clubs and recording
her second album, Segundo, released in Argentina
two years later, and was published in the US in 2002.
Segundo finally crosses the Atlantic, bringing
Molina’s soft vocals, warm acoustic guitars and
electronic textures to Europe, as she is about to release
her third album, Tres Cosas, in the US.
Segundo is a beautiful and delicate piece of
work, feeding on the acoustic tradition of South American
music as well as on more contemporary technology. Her
song-based music places her at the meeting point between
female artists such as Mira
Calix, Colleen
or Mileece and the
likes of Beth Gibbons,
Lisa Germano or Beth Orton. Singing entirely in Spanish
and providing all the music, Molina creates for this
album a series of stunning intimate pop songs, starting
with the delicate Martin Fierro, which combines
an atonal keyboard and an acoustic guitar, before opening
up half-way through to expand on the original melody.
If songs such as ¿Quién?, Mantra
Del Bicho Feo, !Que Llueva! or El
Desconfiado appear more upfront, Molina retains
the fragile structures of her music all the way through
and allows her melodies to freely develop in a multitude
of directions in each composition with delicate textures
sprinkled all over, as to highlight the acoustic nature
of these songs. Segundo benefits of this approach,
as each song appears totally unique, yet, they remain
extremely consistent with each other, held tightly together
by Molina’s softly tinted voice.
This second album already demonstrates an assured talent
with Juana Molina. Clever songwriter and musician, Molina
creates with Segundo a sumptuous world hidden
away from the mainstream, as to preserve its delicates
and fragile beauty. It has taken some time for this
album to reach Europe, but it was more than worth the
wait.
4.8/5 |
