Juana Molina

“Son”

(Domino)

4 Stars



Living in an age of celebrity, we’ve come to take crossover attempts for granted. We’re willing to look the other way while Lindsay Lohan records a solo album; we’ll forgive Jessica Simpson for taking a turn on the silver screen. But there are limits to our tolerance.

There are rules specifying who can move between film and tape, and who can’t. Actresses? Sure. Athletes? Maybe. Comedians? No way.

Juana Molina is—or was—just that: a comedienne, famous in her native Buenos Aires for her role on a popular television show. Yet 10 years ago she turned her back on this success to pursue her first love: music.

Amazingly, she’s proved even better at her second career than her first, confounding expectations and enlivening the otherwise dismal constellation of crossover stars. “Son” is a delicate gem of ambient folk-pop, a smooth-flowing album that’s a pleasure from start to finish. On previous albums, she drifted from on extreme to another, from lush electronic soundscapes to unornamented acoustic guitar lines. With “Son,” she finds her balance: all the elements—vocal lines, guitar riffs, minimal percussion, and electronic textures—intertwine in complementary fashion.

Molina sings with a beautiful, breathy tone, and her airy Spanish lyrics meld seamlessly with the soft musical underpinnings beneath. On the album’s opener, “Rio Seco,” Molina demonstrates her vocal abilities to great effect. She displays a wonderfully free sense of rhythm—sometimes drawing her vowels out languidly, and sometimes chopping her words short—creating a gentle sense of syncopation above the simple pulse and layered guitar.

The album is further enriched by the tonalities of her voice, occasionally bringing in a slight nasal inflection or dropping to a barely audible whisper.

Her guitar style is reminiscent of the late folk-pop great Nick Drake, and her songs evoke dreamy landscapes that will sound familiar to Drake’s fans. She plays slowly and easily, occasionally drifting into the bossa nova territory of Joao Gilberto. She never attempts anything fancy, and she doesn’t need to; she just lets her voice gently carry the songs along.

She experiments with vocal loops, and is usually successful in her attempts to integrate minimal electronic effects into her otherwise organic sound. Occasionally, she goes a bit overboard, as in “Yo No,” when her self-sampling produces an abrupt and jagged effect that detracts from the tune’s flow. And even this poorly-conceived experiment isn’t bad, precisely; it’s just a pity that obtrusive digital effects overshadow her beautiful voice.

This is not innovative or challenging music. Neither is it particularly substantive. Yet with “Son,” Molina proves that, on rare occasions, light music can also be great music. The joy of this album is the joy of simple things.