[ATTENDED: April 23, 2024] Juana Molina / Madison Cunningham
I have wanted to see Juana Molina for a few years (I was supposed to see her in 2020 but her show was cancelled due to COVID). I’d rather have seen her as a headliner, but this collaborative night sounded like a lot of fun.
And holy cow was it ever.
Madison Cunningham (who is 27) is labelled an Americana singer, but that’s a limiting description. Primarily because, as she told us, she listened to Juana Molina before she listened to The Beatles (and Juana is cooler than all four of them). I didn’t know her music that well, but I love her song “Hospital,” which I think is just fantastic.
Juana Molina’s music is not exactly outrageous, but it is often unexpected. And that has clearly impacted Madison Cunningham’s songwriting, because her songs are anything but verse-chorus-verse folk songs.
The two singers came out on stage and played a 20 minute improv. Juana played a basic intro on the guitar which she then looped. She added drums and keyboard sounds. All the while, Madison was playing guitar solos–nothing fancy and showoffy, just notes here and there, some pretty, some noisy.
They jammed and jammed and just when you thought it was winding down, Juana would shift gears and take it in a different direction. It wound up pretty noisy and harsh.
Enough so that when Madison left the stage for Juana to play her solo songs, Juana felt the need to calm everyone down saying that normally their improvs are more mellow and they lead into the next song very well.
Juana’s first song is from her second album (recently reissued on vinyl), The song is a soft guitar ballad that progresses in different ways–with some quiet synths and then after a brief spoken interlude: “If you see someone else winning, leave them alone” the song built into a mild rocker. It segued into the final song off of Molina’s Wed 21. It’s a quiet song that loops on itself and turned into a trippy psychedelic song by the end with all of the fun synthy sounds Juana threw into it.
Her third song was from the only album I know (Halo). “Estalacticas” is a cool song with a deep guitar riff and then a wild synth melody (thrown over the top). She looped more and more sounds onto it until it filled the room.
Then Madison came out and Juana left. I was blown away by Madison’s guitar playing. She pulled out a small acoustic guitar and played “Broken Harvest,” a song with a massively detailed and complicated guitar melody, with interesting chords and main melody lines. Her voice was also really pretty and impressive.
She was also really funny. When she commented on how quiet the crowd was, someone replied, “we’re in awe.” And Madison was super quick with “My mom say the nicest things.” (more…)
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