Juana Molina live at Crawdaddy

Juana Molina must roll her eyes to heaven every time she hears herself described as Argentina’s answer to Bjork. Still, the comparison isn’t completely fatuous: the Buenos Aires native writes fluttering, eerie dirges, fragmented songs that teeter on the brink of incoherence yet always pull back just in time.
If there's a difference, it's that Molina doesn’t demand your attention via psycho-kook shrieks and marching-band zaniness. Rather she surrounds herself in an aura of reluctant eccentricity. At Crawdaddy, she’s all sheepish giggles and uncomfortable pauses – surprising when you remember she is a former television comedian with house-hold name status in South America.
She is accompanied by a drummer and guitarist – a contrast with her last appearance at this venue, when she used looped pedals and ghostly vocal samples. Her new songs, from the recent Un Dia album, are more conventional, too. For the first time Molina is acknowledging the influence on her sound of South American music: 'Los Hongos de Marosa' churns and crashes on flamenco beats; 'Viva Solo' finds a way to be both structurally incoherent and beguilingly sweet-souled. Who said too many kooks was a bad thing?