Juana Molina
‘Un Dia’
(Domino) 

‘Un Dia’ is Juana Molina’s fifth album, in a career dedicated to following a most inspired and inspirational muse.

It's 12 years on from her debut, ‘Rara’ and, if that album perhaps struggled at first to find an audience, then that audience has grown surely and strongly with the albums that have followed.

But it’s not that Molina has made concessions to the marketplace, or chased a more accessible sound; as is often   the case with visionary artists, instead the world has caught up with her, the pop landscape shifting to create a new context, where the joyous ‘pop’ elements of her music make immediate sense.


It makes perfect sense, for example, that Molina is currently on tour with Feist, one of a growing wave of artists whose music is recorded in ‘unconventional’ ways, who take maverick liberties with the received wisdoms of song writing and song structure, and yet still compose music that is compelling, accessible, addictive, and irresistibly, strangely ‘pop’.

And while the global influences upon her work, drawing from a well much wider than the simple western pop tradition, might once have exiled Molina incorrectly in the ‘World Music’ section of your local record shop, a spectrum of artists from MIA to Bjork have torn a fissure between ‘World’ and ‘Pop’, and encouraged us to open our ears wide enough that Juana’s hypnotic music can’t help but beguile.

And ‘Un Dia’ is a hypnotic record, restless, alive with melodies that surface imperceptibly before burrowing into your brain, never to leave.

This approach informs more than just Un Dia’s rhythms. These songs are bright and playful; for all their seeming complexity, the melodies and harmonies of tracks like ‘¿Quien? (Suite)’ lock into place instantly, the gentle and trancelike conversation between coos and sighs and handclaps and murmurs building to nagging, chiming hooks and refrains.

And while she has experimented with Ambient and Electronic, ‘Un Dia’ is a warmly human record. Molina’s voice plays to the foreground, gliding dreamily through the tangle tentative rhythm on the blissful eddy of  ‘No Llama’, sighing urgently along with the spectral guitars and keyboards of ‘Los Hongos De Marosa’.
This is adventurous, magical music, taking bold steps into some unknown, but forever beckoning us, encouraging us to follow.
(3/5)