Halo was a loose concept album centered around the Patagonian folk legend of the “luz mala.” On DOGA, Molina’s fascinations have shifted from the paranormal to the paranatural. She cherry-picks synthetic textures that mimic the most terrifying sounds you can hear in your own backyard—a fisher cat’s cry, a coyote’s howl, the humming of a wasp’s nest under the eaves. On “desinhumano,” Molina’s guitar takes on the twang of a Chinese guzheng as she retells the tale of Sun Wukong, a recurring character in the country’s literature. “The monkey strides with his eager heart to be immortal,” Molina warns. “The master, generous, imparts his wisdom/Swiftly, the monkey learns, yet proudly he fails him/Uninhuman!/He will fall, he will fall.” The cruelty one human can inflict on another is scarier than anything out there in the dark.
While pregnant with her daughter in 1993, Molina quit Juana y Sus Hermanas; later in hte decade, she moved to L.A. for a time to pursue music. The mesmerizing “intringulado”—“an invented word to describe a mess all tangled up,” per DOGA’s lyrics sheet—adds a wrinkle to that narrative. Molina sings of a trio of sisters squabbling over a teapot that belonged to their mother. (Her sister, Inés, was one of the titular Hermanas, and their mother, Chunchuna Villafañe, had careers as a model and actress.) She knows how to spin a yarn, that the faintest whiff of confession is intoxicating. Several songs on DOGA are written in play dialogue, which goes to explain why listening to the album can feel more like sitting down to a great piece of experimental theater: Juana Molina starring as “Juana Molina.” The true story is beside the point. Left turns are the foundational units of Molina’s artistic practice. She was never going to stay in one place for long.
