Juana Molina’s fourth album, Son, is a welcome return to the spacier aesthetic of her earlier releases. The Argentinean’s delicately ambient yet earthy blend of folk basics and electronic particulars seems like deconstructions of larger works — reinterpretations that have been put back together with enough air between the individual parts to let them breathe and grow of their own volition, while still maintaining a connection to the whole. Throughout the album’s twists and turns is Molina’s soft, sometimes manipulated and multiplied falsetto. To a non-Spanish speaker, Molina’s voice is a simpler thing; her vocals are pure sounds, unencumbered by verbal connotation. The lyrical lines blend seamlessly with the surrounding keyboards, muted trumpets, guitar and computerized percussion. Son bases its construction on thoughtful gradations of repeated sounds, and its themes never overstep their limits. The album is not so much an aural narrative — like so many singer-songwriter efforts — as it is a landscape. Molina’s careful, delicate, sweet-sounding creations survey the land with sublime precision.
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