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At several points during Juana Molina’s Mexico City show at Foro Indie Rocks! on January 23, the 63-year-old experimental pop/rock star stepped away from her keyboard, guitar, and microphone to do a little dance. Her routine, somewhere between car-wash inflatable and Triller tribute to a mid-’10s Chicago bop track, was one of the only parts of her set that wasn’t technically masterful. Far from robotic, though, Molina’s performance shook with passion for her art and compassion for her fans.
When Molina and her drummer stepped on stage roughly an hour and a half after doors, the crowd exploded for the Argentine singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with hundreds of thousands of devoted followers across the Spanish-speaking world. It was an energy different from the kind of raucousness rabid fans exhibit north of the border: Chatty and kinetic, the vibe was less rapt than mutually excited — less pick-me, more genuinely fun.
Molina has an unusual backstory: Before she became one of Argentina’s most beloved musicians, she found fame in the early ’90s as the leader of a sketch comedy series called Juana y sus hermanas. Despite the show’s massive popularity in Latin America, she quit after two years to release her debut album in 1996 (in interviews, she’s said she saw acting as a money-making means to pursue her musical passions). She’s since put out six more studio LPs, a live album, two EPs (including last year’s), and a collaborative project with fellow singer/multi-instrumentalist Alejandro Frannov, releasing at a relatively regular rate for the past 27 years. Prolific on social media, she announces her shows with endearing Instagram videos in which she adopts bizarre facial and vocal filters — proof her comic abilities remain intact. Though she tours internationally less than she used to, she emitted a childlike excitement at Indie Rocks! as she powered through a precise 90-minute set full of tricky arrangements.
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![Live Review: Juana Molina shows off experimental pop multi-mastery in Mexico](https://thefader-res.cloudinary.com/private_images/w_760,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:eco/BY_daviddbarajas-15_znisov/photos-by-a-target-_new-href-https-www-instagram-com-daviddbarajas-reels-locale-us-hl-am-et-david-barajas-a.jpg)
Molina’s setup doesn’t prepare the concertgoer for the complexity of the arrangements that erupt from the speakers at her shows. Using a variety of loopers, pedals, synths, and samplers, she and percussionist Diego Lopez de Arcaute lay out pieces — sometimes smooth, sometimes jagged — that slowly, or quickly, join to create intricate sound puzzles. On faster tracks, these tend to be crunchy chord progressions that stay close to the root and riff on the blues scale, and drum lines inclined toward Afrobeat and soukous polyrhythms. On slower, more freeform songs, the ingredients are less cut and dried.
At Foro Indie Rocks!, Molina exhibited her mastery of the guitar, the keyboard, the auxiliary synths atop it, and the many effects pedals and loopers at her feet. Her set began with “Astro de luz segunda,” the opening track from her most recent project, November 2024’s EXHALO EP. The six-minute cut sped by on driving drum fills and a curtly rendered four-chord foundation, accented by the guitar blue notes Molina often uses to keep things harmonically interesting. Molina and Arcaute threaded a delicate line between instrumental crescendos, slick verses, and a climatic bridge before tying things off with satisfying finesse.
The show might have benefited from a less straightforward arc: Slower, keyboard-centric songs were frontloaded while the setlist’s back half was populated mostly by guitar-and-percussion-forward shredders. One late-set highlight was “Wed 21,” in which a wonky, nearly atonal guitar and playfully repetitive drums undergird monotoned vocals that serve as a bent lightning rod, grounding the chaos at moments but heightening it elsewhere. Live, without the benefit of a third player, the song’s technicality got the best of Molina and Arcaute on their first two attempts, but they nailed it the third time through, playing off the minor fiasco with a wink; the audience ate it up.
It’s clear that, despite rarely traveling outside South America, Molina feels tremendous affection for her Mexican fans. At one point, a crowdmember asked Molina a question that led to a heartfelt, conversational exchange. Near the end of the set, she was visibly tearing up.
Before the encore, the crowd urged Molina back out with cheers of “Ole, ole, ole, ole, Juana, Juana.” The response to her return was an exuberant cheer that rippled from the rail to the back balcony, and she responded with a short speech about making music to help the world find happiness during dark times.
The night ended on “Un Día,” an indisputably iconic track from Molina’s 2012 album of the same name. It starts with two central elements: a piano melody that sounds a lot like the start of “Music for a Harmonium” (the triumphant song that plays in Napeloen Dynamite after Napoleon does his epic dance) and a hypnotic loop of Molina repeating “one day” over and over. Then, slowly, it blossoms into a teeming ecosystem of its own. Anthemic and tuneful, delivered with Molina’s last wiggling dance, it was a 10/10 landing for a nearly perfect show.