The Works of Drew Tewksbury, a Multimedia Journalist

Album Reviews

Juana Molina- Un Día

By Drew Tewksbury ⋅ November 3, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Imagine the following: Tina Fey the immensely talented actress and writer, who is inarguably at the height of her game, decides tomorrow to forsake her acting career to become an experimental songstress who crafts delicately beautiful ballads. Former Argentine TV actress Juana Molina did just that. She left behind her fame (reportedly leaving fans in her home country aghast) to return to her roots in music. Her father was a tango singer, and, within the constrained rhythms of her music—fragile micro beats seemingly sewn together with spiderwebs—she reveals the rhythmic skeleton of South America at her core. She whispers and coos gently, “Que difícil,” over crunchy guitar upstrokes, warped keyboards, and ticking kick drum in “Dar (Qué Difícil).” Many of the songs on Un Día are made up of inexplicably danceable beats and, oftentimes, a simple handclap drives an entire track. Creating complex rhythms between vocal layers—some of which are just sounds that become the beats to her intertwined lyrical wandering—her inclusion of subtle electronics, like the mangled dial tones percolating below her sweet, siren-like vocals in “Los Hongos De Marosa,” push the album into uncharted territory for a woman with a guitar. Her sound is more akin to the innovative music of Björk and Joanna Newsom than, say, that of Jewel. But, she keeps it palatable and strangely beautiful.