Juana
Molina would prefer it if we didn’t preview her RIJF appearances. But if we
absolutely have to write about them,
she hopes we don’t feel the need to gush.
“Just
say, ‘she sucks,'” Molina tells us from her home in Argentina. “That’s a
feeling I have. Because I don’t like too many things. And when I have an
extremely good review, I get scared. That leaves too much room for failure.”
By
now, the Juana Molina Story has been well-documented by the music press: adored
Argentinean television comedienne suddenly leaves TV to start recording music
that puzzles and disappoints her many fans.
“At
the time people just couldn’t believe it,” she says. “It was like a
contradiction, because I was very well-known here. So if I played anywhere, it
was sold out in a second. But by the middle of the show there was already no
one. It was like a bad joke. For a movie it would be a good scene: a very, very
bad live show and then she becomes the greatest star in the world.”
Molina’s
joking, of course. Though she’s more comfortable now than she’s ever been,
musical insecurity is something that’s dogged her for years.
She
grew up playing guitar in what she describes as “a very musical family.” Still,
she says, “I had lots of problems with music. I don’t know why. I listened to
all sorts of music. But when it was time to sing I just could sing in front of
my father and my sister, not even my mother.”
There
was a point in Molina’s TV career, though, when she simply couldn’t keep going.
It was mid-season and she learned she was pregnant. And while she could easily
have stuck it out and finished the year, she chucked it all. “I knew something
changed my whole way of seeing the world and seeing myself in the world, and I
thought ‘What are you doing? I am wasting my time. I’m going to be too old.
It’s going to be too late.’ I didn’t want to be an old lady saying, ‘I could
have done that better than her.’ I saw that image of me in the future and I
said ‘Nooooo!’ and I stopped everything. Right away.”
Even
though her mind was made up, even though she was ready to sidestep television
stardom to attempt a career in music, she was scared. And it took a while for
Molina to achieve the elemental, lovely music heard on 2000’s Segundo or her latest, Tres Cosas, which was recorded in 2002
but not released in the US until 2004.
Molina’s
music stands out mainly because it’s so utterly disconnected. Her tuneful songs
— typically created with acoustic guitar, electronic keyboards, and Molina’s
ethereal Spanish vocals — reveal no discernable influences. They sound
magically naïve, untouched by all the noise of the world. Stateside fans who
don’t speak a lick of Spanish often talk about how Molina’s schoolyard cadences
stick with them despite the language barrier.
Her
first release, 1996’s Rara, is her
only album with a band and a producer. And it’s almost wholly deficient of the
rare beauty she’s shown since.
Ultimately
unhappy with Rara and even more
discouraged by the live shows that followed, Molina retreated. She bought a
computer and started recording demos on her own.
“I
slowly started to realize that a demo didn’t need to be a demo anymore. A demo
could be the record,” she says. “And when I realized that, I had a lot of
things I already recorded. And I thought: If I like it this way, why do I have
to make it in a different way? I started to learn how to record. When you like
something and you hear it with virgin ears, you don’t even think about the
sound.”
Purity is
something Molina very much aspires to in her music. It’s an idea she brings up throughout
our interview. But she realizes it doesn’t make much sense to be too conscious
of it. Quite simply, she says, “I don’t want to think.”
“I
wish I could be like some of these musicians who record on tour. I don’t know
how they do that,” Molina says. “Because I really need some loneliness, I need
this spirit of being on my own. It’s like getting soaked in the music, so I’m
in the middle of it and not outside of it.”
Much
of the material on Segundo and Tres Cosas was recorded late at night,
when sheer exhaustion practically forced Molina to remove her guard. “I could
say I was asleep because I was soooo tired,” she says. “But I couldn’t leave
the room. I couldn’t stop recording. Because I was making music I’m sure I
wouldn’t have if I was in my normal state because of all the filters, wondering
what people will think.”
It’s
no surprise to hear the Molina’s a huge fan of Animal Collective’s lush and
alien campfire arrangements. “I haven’t liked a record that much in many
years,” she says of the Brooklyn group’s Sung
Tongs. “I just think it’s so free and unique.”
Molina
would very much like to return to the solitude and sleepy haze that pervades
her recordings. But her growing reputation is going to make that difficult.
She’s coming off a major tour with David Byrne. And New York Times music critic Jon Pareles listed Tres Cosas in his 2004 top 10. The record was even played on a
recent episode of The OC.
The
Pareles nod and the Byrne tour, she says, made her “someone who’s worth
hearing” in her native Argentina. “People just couldn’t believe that was true.
They couldn’t believe it. So all last year was: Have you heard about Juana
Molina touring with David Byrne? No way!”
People
are finally listening. And Molina doesn’t mind, too much.
“Now
I have this pressure,” she says. “Because when I recorded those records, no one
knew about me. No one. So it didn’t matter. I could do whatever I wanted to do.
But now it will be very different. Because everybody’s talking. Not everybody,
but the people who talk. They already have an opinion. They already have
expectations about what I am going to do next.”
Molina’s
new material has actually grown out of the live adaptations she’s been
performing of her old songs. “I had to change them a little bit so I don’t get
bored,” she says. And she’s realized her new arrangements don’t have to be
limited to her old work.
For
her two jazz festival sets, Molina will play new arrangements but she’ll stick
to the old songs. “If I played the new songs now, when the record is released
they will already be old to me,” she says. “And when I feel I’m doing something
by heart and not with my heart, I get rid of it.”
Whatever
happens, you get the sense Molina will find some reason to fret.
“I
am a worrier,” she admits. “But at least I can do it now. I couldn’t even do it
before. I couldn’t play a song in front of anyone. I became totally paralyzed.
My hands would start shaking. I’d hit the wrong notes. Everything was wrong.
How could people think I was good at anything if I couldn’t prove otherwise? I
was totally stuck for a long, long, long, long time. I’m happy that it finally
happened. I would have died without this. I could have died doing my stupid
characters, going on and on and on forever.”
Juana Molina plays at Max
of Eastman Place, 387 East Main Street, on Saturday, June 11, at 6:15 and 10
p.m., as part of the Rochester International Jazz Festival. Free with Club
Pass. $15 tickets available at the venue, space permitting.
www.rochesterjazz.com
This article appears in Jun 1-7, 2005.
