Light, breezy, and atmospheric, Juana Molina's Tres Cosas is a sonic journey that is at once soothing and intriguing. The instrumentation is spare but effective. "Uh" glides along on acoustic guitar and electronica loops that mingle with her soft vocals to create an appealing soundscape. The Argentinian singer/songwriter fuses folk and electronica rhythms on the title track. If you don't know Spanish, it doesn't matter. But even if you do, the lyrics are not the main focus here. These 13 tracks of electronica music are not so much for dancing as they are for reflecting and relaxing. With her soft half-spoken/half-sung vocals and sonic ambience, Molina sounds like what you'd get if you mixed folk singer Suzanne Vega and Yes' Jon Anderson. --Ramiro Burr
Juana Molina
Tres Cosas
[Domino; 2004]
Rating: 7.2
In a past life that came to a close sometime around 1996, Buenos Aires' Juana Molina was a well-known comedienne and television host, something akin to Argentina's Tracey Ullman, or say, Carol Burnett. It was a role she dutifully fulfilled for almost seven years before succumbing to a twerk of conscience and retreating to Los Angeles in the hopes of starting again, this time as a musician.
Tres Cosas is Molina's third full-length since she abandoned television outright in the mid-90s, but her past as a successful comedian still clings closely to her brand. The obvious reason for that is because it's a compelling backstory in its own right, the kind of anecdote that journalists and publicists don't easily forget. But in the context of her work as a musician, the dogged funnylady characterizations begin to make even more sense; modest, meandering and resoundingly uncommercial, Molina's is just not the kind of music you would anticipate from a former star of any kind.
Conceived as a bare-bones response to 2000's comparatively elaborate Segundo, Tres Cosas consists of breathy, wafer-thin Argentinean folk that occasionally flirts with the vanguard. Excepting the underwater synth piece "Filter Taps" and the gonzo pitch-wheel bonanza of "Yo Se Que", everything here hinges on Molina's nimble voice and a guitar, and yet it'd be misleading to stop at calling it acoustic music.
Part of Molina's appeal-- and this is what's getting her namechecked by more than just the world music set-- lies in the way her songs incorporate subtle additions like xylophones, strings, synths, loops and ambient washes without ever changing shape. One gets the sense from tracks such as "No Es Tan Cierto" (which slyly sneaks a xylophone and some sparse percussion behind its opening guitar motif) and the beautiful "Curame" (a three-shades blend of guitars, keys and vocals) that she's seeing the spaces in her songs and arranging them to match. The end result is a record of mixed materials that still sounds natural; a far cry from some of folk music's more hamfisted attempts at acoustic/electronic collusion.
Because Molina's compositions tend to be guided by stream of consciousness, sing-songy word trails, some of them need lots of time to fully take root; others-- like the clumsy "El Cristal"-- may never germinate at all. On the whole, however, Tres Cosas is still remarkably lean in fat. Neither particularly immediate nor eager to please, it's also absolutely nothing like a punchline, but who said Molina had to be funny anymore?
-Mark Pytlik, July 23, 2004
Review by Chris Nickson
Welcome to Juana Molina's world. It's a place of friendly funhouse mirrors, where reality stretches or contracts, where sounds whisper rather than assault, and melodies linger on the air. Sounding not a million miles from Lisa Germano fronting a muted Stereolab, it's also like a walk through a spring afternoon, where the sun is pleasant and not too strong -- just enough to refresh the spirit. The former actress has developed into a formidable artist, writing, performing, and producing this herself, and presenting her vision unedited. Her music might be low-key, and if you don't speak Spanish, her words mean nothing. But that doesn't matter. In the combed tangle of beats, acoustic guitar, layered voices, and synthesizers, she teases out strands of beauty that emerge and fall back like waves, as on the closing of "Salvese Quien Pueda." She's unafraid of trying things, of putting unlikely elements together -- as on the loops that open the title cut -- to create something much more than the sum of its parts. Far more than someone like Beth Orton -- who seems positively conventional in comparison -- she's creating a new paradigm for singer/songwriters, with electronics an integral part of her sound, rather than an afterthought. She might not have the best voice in the world, but she understands how to use its breathy qualities, whether alone or multi-tracked. Above all, she's made her music into art, and moved confidently ahead from her debut (which looks tentative in retrospect), becoming one of the most individual voices around.
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