This truly delightful album has the strength of material and performance to see it into the BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB category for mega-selling World Music CDs. If Segundo was a really good album, Tres Cosas is a masterpiece. Where the electronic and acoustic elements pushed creatively against each other on Segundo, on Tres Cosas they form a permanent relationship of unblemished harmony and common purpose. Genius, hard work, single mindedness and a unique vision… all this and more to get such an uncommonly natural balance of naturally impossible sounds.
To start with, Molina's songs are in the big league of melodic/emotional commentary. Spanish (one French) lyrics leave this haphazard linguist mainly in the dark at a literal level. But the poetic shapes and onomatopoeic resonances are more than enough to beguile and delight. Molina's voice is richly sweet and serious-sounding. The whole measure lets you know she's telling the truth – even if you don't want to hear it. Maybe especially if you don’t want to hear it. "No es tan cierta" makes plenty of sense: "nothing is certain". Her voice is close mic'ed and there's that very tangible presence of a person in the room while the CD plays.
Her guitar playing has NINA NASTASIA'S deliberate and perfectly enunciated minimalism. No colour-wash strumming or all-purpose play-in-a-day fingered arpeggios. No, sir. Attentive six string playing is there in all the songs as a sinuous common thread to what (if you surprise yourself and listen out) are quite extraordinary additional textures and colours in the electronica.
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These go way beyond exotic sounds, and land slap in the middle of (that word again) natural music. Those dance tempos from her Buenos Aires childhood ripple through everything. Every so often the guitar does a little surge that lifts the glummest face into a smile of appreciation. Syncopation is a good word.
Molina's history of Argentinian TV celebrity, Los Angeles Bohemian re-awakening, three self produced albums and a return to Buenos Aires with husband and daughter is a movie all to itself. This album has legs, breath and mind enough to carry it around the word more than a few times. Its also good to see Domino with its imprint on something with both serious artistic integrity and massive sales potential. And it’s Spanish lessons for me.
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