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HOT OFF THE PRESS (#13) – Juana Molina & Final Fantasy
HOT OFF THE PRESS (#13) – Juana Molina & Final Fantasy
by Nick Courtright
It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for Nick Courtright’s weekly first glance at music discovered in the last seven days, whether it be just-released, just-leaked, or some long-lost gem that has remained under the radar. Click here for other recent editions of Hot Off the Press, featuring acts such as TV on the Radio, Cold War Kids, of Montreal, Peter Bjorn & John, Vivian Girls, White Denim, The Walkmen, Fight Bite, and Grizzly Bear.
Juana Molina – Un Día
to be released October 7 on Domino
Report Card: A-
It’s been well over a year since Panda Bear released Person Pitch, an astounding and groundbreaking album that was practically impossible to dislike, not to mention qualified enough to land near the top of the best of 2007 lists for almost every major (intellectual) music publication. With its relentless looping of vocals, instrumentation, and sonic textures, as well as its propensity for the long song, Person Pitch reshaped what was expected of an avant-pop album in the twenty-first century, and intimated that a sea of imitators would eventually rise in its wake. That said, while it would be ridiculous to cite Juana Molina’s oft-excellent Un Día as a sad-sack imitation or mere trifle, the influence of Panda Bear (and those other looping aficionados, El Guincho and Andrew Bird) is pretty apparent, and acts as a testament to the continued viability of the technique as a way to make engaging and addictive “thinking person’s” music.
Un Día is Molina’s fifth album, so it’s not like she, nor her studio abilities, popped out of nowhere. In fact, her career has been marked with electronically adding flourishes to her acoustic, Argentinian folk, and the former Latin American television star has in the past received commendation from The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly—the indie/innovation-hungry crowd, though, has for the most part slept on her work, which up until now was perhaps a little too traditional for their fickle tastes. But Un Día, through its sheer bombast and ambition, is bound to find a wider and more enthusiastic American audience than her previous efforts—songs such as the title track and “Los Hongos de Marosa” are so stunning it’d be a shame if American audiences didn’t catch on. While the album is at times so subtle that it drags, especially through its meaty and long-songed center, its peaks are well-worth the wait, and multiple listens bring life even to the album’s most sluggish moments. In the end, this mostly-beautiful album is a welcome addition to the foundling legion of acts influenced (knowingly or not) by the approaches present on Person Pitch, and its willingness to break the looping for more traditional musical development ably separate it from the El Guinchos of the world—in short: listen to this.
Listen to songs by Juana Molina here
Final Fantasy – 2 EPs (Plays to Please & Spectrum, 14th Century)
to be released October/September 30 on Blocks Recording Club
Report Card: B
It’s very easy to get into a lot of confusing trouble talking about these two EPs. After all, the circumstances of their creations are ambitious and a little confounding, and it’s difficult to sort fact from fiction: Plays to Please features songs by Alex Lukashevsky reworked for a 35-piece band, which sounds innocent enough until you realize how fucked up some of the lyrics are, and Spectrum, 14th Century enlists the backing band of Zach Condon’s Beirut project, which appears on the surface to be pretty straightforward, until the EP reveals itself to be a conceptual piece meant to describe a made-up town in a made-up place in a time long, long ago. And that’s just the beginning, because Final Fantasy frontman Owen Pallett is one of those wildly bright and frustratingly eccentric types, and not only are these two EPs completely different in their own rights, but they expand upon the already iconoclastic canon Pallett has constructed, as he uses the additional manpower to back his stunning string arrangements with the familiar-but-300-years-old sounds of chamber music.
But it any of this good? Well, yes, but it’s not something you’re going to listen to all day long. One of the benefits of an EP is that you don’t have to dedicate 100% to an approach, and both of these EPs see Pallett going further off the map than ever before. There are songs, though, such as “Ultimatum” and “Crush-Love-Crush” off Plays to Please and “The Butcher” and “Cockatrice” off Spectrum, 14th Century, that fall in line with Final Fantasy’s excellent track record, and would fit in well on many a playlist. The tracks surrounding these, though, are hit or miss, and make neither of these EPs worth a thousand repeat listens. Both of them, undeniably, do a great job developing Final Fantasy’s reputation as an unpredictable and intriguing act, and buttress Pallett’s relatively thin portfolio with some truly challenging material. Ultimately, EPs of this odd ilk are best reserved for established fans of the act—everyone else should probably pick up one of Final Fantasy’s quite excellent LPs.
Listen to songs by Final Fantasy here