Juana dance

Everyone thought Juana Molina was mad to walk away from a successful career as a TV comic in order to find herself as a singer. But it took a move to the US before the Argentinian public and media copped on to the treasure in their midst, writes Jim Carroll

WHEN Juana Molina looks out her window, she often sees and hears some of her backing singers staring back at her and singing their little heads off. They are the birds who nest in the trees surrounding her house near Buenos Aires. Molina didn't plan it, but the birds played a starring role on her current record, Son.

"I used to think the area around my house was quiet, but that's not the case at all," the comic turned singer says. "There are birds singing all day long. When the sun goes down, they seem to turn up the volume. If you didn't like that sound, I could imagine it becoming really, really nasty and unpleasant."

Molina didn't realise just how loud the birds were until she came to record Son at home. "It was only when I listened back to the tracks that I heard what had happened. I would be singing into a microphone and the birds would also be singing in the background so, quite accidentally, they became absorbed into the song. I decided to make them a part of the record because I knew I couldn't get them to shut up."

The singer ended up borrowing more than just birdsong from her feathered neighbours for her fourth album. "Because all I have listened to in the last three years are the sounds around me here at home, I began to understand how nature works. You have one bird singing one song and another bird beside him singing a different song and they both seem to be ignoring each other. There's a randomness in nature which is quite fascinating to observe."

She decided to take a similar approach for such tracks as Un Beso Llega and Hay Que Ver Si Voy. "I began to record loops and layers in different tempos. It really gives you a sense that the loops are moving of their own accord."

But that's not the only thing which makes Son such a remarkable find. Molina's previous albums (including Segundo and Tres Cosas) had their moments of splendour amidst her minimal array of beats and loops. But her craft as a songwriter has taken a massive leap forward on Son. Molina's delicate, sun-dappled, folksy cooing and purring now adorn songs which are both sturdy and seductive. She attributes this development to simply playing more live shows. While her apprenticeship as a musician began in 1999, she's only recently begun to perform regularly.

"When I released the first few albums, I had never played live. OK, I had done a few little shows, but I had never toured. It was the other way around for me because I played live shows after I had recorded a few albums. There's a confidence you get from playing live, and that has impacted on how I write and what I write. It's something which has happened without me realising it."

Of course, when Molina first set off to write and record her own songs, her family and friends thought she was mad. Back then, she was the star of Juana y sus hermanas (Juana and Her Sisters), a hit sketch-comedy TV show in Argentina. Hugely popular for her impersonations and skits, Molina was one of the country's top TV faces.

However, a TV career was not what she wanted. Appearing on TV shows was supposed to be a short-term way of making a living, not the be-all and end-all of Molina's life. The release of her first album, Rara (1996), persuaded her she had to make the big jump and do music full-time.

"When Rara came out, no-one would listen to it or review it or take it seriously because I was this comic on the TV. Everyone had this idea about what the record would be, based on my TV show. I had already done a comedy record based around impersonations from the TV show, but people just assumed that my first proper record was something similar.

"Even when I insisted that this was a serious record, critics thought it was just a whim, that I was now so famous I thought I could explore the music world, and they ignored it."

Molina did play some live shows, all of which sold out in a couple of minutes. "By the middle of the show, most of the audience had left because it wasn't like the TV show. It was turning into a bad joke."

At first she was angry with the complete lack of interest in her music. "Most of my friends knew I wanted to do music rather than TV and they had to put up with me complaining nonstop about it." But then, she realised that this was something she could actually change herself. "Once I decided to focus on what I really wanted to do, which was music, I had to leave and go to Los Angeles. What else could I have done? I didn't want to grow old regretting that I didn't do music."

In Los Angeles, the KCRW radio station was playing tracks from Rara. Molina played a couple of shows. "I was very shy, I was shaking and trembling." But she knew there was no turning back.

"When I left the TV show, I remember my mother saying that I was throwing away my career and, in a way, she was right because I'll never get that TV career back now. But I'm much, much happier making music, and that makes up for everything."

She finds it interesting that now, with overseas success under her belt, the media in Argentina want to talk to her again. "People here only began to realise what I was doing when they read reviews from Europe and the United States and Japan, or when they heard I was touring with David Byrne, or when the New York Times raved about me. It was only then that Argentine journalists wanted to interview me."

Some interviewers, she says, just don't get it. "A presenter on one of the biggest radio shows in Argentina said to me live on air 'Hey, you must have something after all if these foreigners like you. We had better listen to your record.' I couldn't believe he said that, I couldn't believe he admitted that. He really buried himself with that comment."

Now, though, many people know all about Molina and her sounds. "When I recorded those first records, no one knew about me as a musician so I could do whatever I wanted to do. But now people know me and talk about me and have an opinion about my music. They already have expectations about what I am going to do next. That's pressure, but it's the kind of pressure I can deal with."

Juana Molina plays Crawdaddy, Dublin on November 27th; Roisin Dubh, Galway on November 28th; and Cyprus Avenue, Cork on November 29th. Son is out now on Domino Records