ig-Juana Molina

I‘d never consciously listened to Juana Molina until Domino kindly sent us a copy of her recent album Son. KCRW talks about her all the time, to the point that my initial excitement about getting CDs from one of my favorite labels almost disappeared when I saw what the package contained. However, I’m now ecstatic to report that this is a phenomenal album, the kind that goes best with a private pair of headphones or a drive down tree-lined avenues at night.

The instrumentation is somewhat trancey, like what you might hear while getting a deep-tissue massage, but the occasional backwards guitar and sampled vocal beats keep the music from sounding anything like new age. Juana’s voice meanwhile is like a will-o-the-wisp: with every listen it draws me further into the jungle. Why the jungle? I don’t know. Either it’s the distorted sorta wild cat sounds in “La Verdad”, or the omnipresent crickets, or maybe it’s just because saying “Juana” reminds me of the word “iguana”. Who knows. All I know is that I thought listening to Srta Molina would lead me to certain doom, but instead I found an aural paradise. Care for a taste?

• Listen to “La Verdad“
• Listen to “Micael“