Juana Molina - Halo

Drowned In Sound 100

See, for her seventh album Juana Molina wants us to think of ancient magicks, with the bone on the cover gazing at us from its storied past. But Halo doesn’t invoke shamanic rituals – no, these are axioms and diagrams set in motion, perfect arcs and straight lines and right angles aligned both on the page and in the natural world. We shouldn’t expect less mastery from a physicist two decades into her field – yet, even for Molina, who has trekked odysseys through drone and voice before, Halo marks an epiphany in the science of travel. How does one hour flow so swiftly? How do the echoes of former futures sound so fresh again, as if their waning promise of grandeur never faded?

Well, solving any question in physics demands balance – one side of the formula must equal the other. And, more often than not, we reach that symmetry through the simplest route possible. Is this not a joy, that through efficient number crunching on paper, one can calculate the height of a tree, or the flight path of a flung stone? Songs like 'Cosoco' and 'Cara de Espejo' confirm that yes, this is a joy: take the bloated opera of Yes, and pare that down to match the dome-like economy of Neu!. Looks daunting, sure, but convert everything to the same unit of measurement, and you’ll speed through the rest – hence the crisp guitars, the analogue pulse, the vocals dialled back to congenial incantation. It’s the same logic that applies when finding the distance travelled of a speeding car in a set time interval. Basic steps yield a concrete answer.

But the real beauty of equations – and, by extension, Halo - lies in their utility. Paper airplanes and space shuttles both must overcome gravity to fly; likewise, the same economy in style applies to the hip opener 'Paraguya', Broadcast transmissions like 'A00 B01', or the meditations of 'Lentísmo Halo' and 'Cálculos y Oráculos'. 'Andó' shuffles with all kinds of tricky drums and alien signals, but again never detracts from the essence of melody, the x in the formula. Even songs more akin to Molina’s backlog, like the gentle creek flow of 'Los Pies Helados', resonate with the same resolute acceleration.

Now, I say 'formula', but Halo is by no means 'formulaic', in the usual degrading sense. The formulas at play here – and indeed they play, humming and skipping under Molina in songs like 'Sin Dones' as she wanders across the skies – could belong to no one else. For, as much as I hear modern physics in the design, the superstitions of old still linger here, like when distant flutes (panpipes?) blow softly on 'Los Pies Helados'. Perhaps they’ve always mingled, dancing undetected to all but the most perceptive scientists – for what are theorems and myths but two ways of rendering nature and its miraculous existence?

All of this, just to say – that, as axioms in math and science are cemented into the academic canon through decades of affirmative trials, so Halo cements itself into yr ears. This is logic in motion, and it’s dead beautiful to watch every piece of these puzzles fall into place.

Pitchfork 80

The first songs Juana Molina wrote on her guitar as a young girl in Argentina were simple things, repetitive melodies comprised of a few notes and chords. She would play them over and over for weeks on end, lulling herself into a trance. Without the confidence to explore her droning ambient tendencies, she dressed them up with a chorus, verse, and bridge, a spoonful of sugar meant to disguise her kookier tendencies.

Her 1996 debut LP Rara did much of the same, a folky pop record that only offered glimpses of the rhythmic experimentation she would later explore more fully. Her early career was marked by a slow shedding of her protective pop armor. And when she discovered the Boss RC-20 loop station for 2004’s Tres Cosas, she finally had the tool to take those trance-inducing loops she’d been drawn to since childhood and craft lush, layered compositions. With each record, as she’s shed layer after layer of constricting pop and folk structures, she seems to reveal more and more of herself.

Halo is Molina’s seventh and strongest LP. She wields a sonic palette refined by two decades of experimentation to create a narrative defined not by words, but by mood. Loosely based on the folk legend of the “luz mala”—a halo of “evil light” that floats above the ground where bones are buried—the record evokes the occult in its music as much as in its Spanish lyrics. The fickle protagonist of “Paraguaya” feeds potions to a lover in order to manipulate his desires, but beyond the words, there’s clearly some brujería at work. The ominous strings and purring percussion make that clear, if the 1,000-yard stare peering at you from the femur on the album’s cover didn’t already.

On 2008’s “Un Día,” Molina sung of a desire to deliver songs with no lyrics; in 2017, she’s perfected the form. Three tracks on Halo—“In the Lassa,” “A00 B01,” and “Andó”—feature her voice but no words. Her rhythmic vocals are looped and layered, blending in as another instrumental layer in the ambient compositions. Above each song hangs a looming specter, its characters in search of paranormal assistance in the physical realm to soothe their confusion and regret. Occasionally she even seems to speak with her synthesizer; its brooding warble on “Cálculos y Oráculos” is as expressive as any vocal.

Much is made of Molina’s past as a comedic television performer in Argentina. Her decision to walk away from her show “Juana y Sus Hermanas” at the peak of its popularity is an alluring part of her mystique, but it also underscores her intention. Her acting career was a means to an end, a way to support her music, the art she cared about. Her early folk tendencies and pop structures served a similar purpose, a means to explore the off-kilter rhythms and ambient melodies that lulled her into a trance as a child, pulling us in along with her.

Halo suggests a self-realization that is often breathtaking. On “Cara de espejo,” Molina sings of a woman looking in the mirror, shocked by the truth she finds in her own reflection. “Cuando uno sabe qué va a verse en un espejo/Pone la cara que espera ver en el reflejo,” she sings. Or, in English, “When you know you'll look at yourself in the mirror/You pull the face you hope to see in the reflection.” It seems Molina finally sees her true self staring back at her.

The Guardian 80

(Crammed Discs)

Juana Molina is a quietly unsettling singer-songwriter from Argentina who specialises in experimental folktronica, mixing acoustic styles and electronica in songs that constantly switch between charming and quirky to downright spooky. On the album cover, her face appears to have morphed into a bone, like a witch from some ancient ceremony, while on the slow and doomy Lentísimo Halo there are references to an evil light which appears in Argentine folk tales. The daughter of a tango musician, Molina may sing in a trance-like whisper, but she understands the importance of rhythm; many of the songs are underpinned by a sturdy bass line, over which she adds guitar, bass or keyboards, playing all the instruments herself on several tracks. There are sturdy melodies on the quietly charming Cosoco or Cálculos Y Oráculos, but even an apparently conventional song is soon transformed by her edgy and intriguing off-kilter soundscapes.