Even her more delicate chamber tunes, such as "Elena" and "La Verdad," accrue subtle force through their trance-like rhythms and (on "Elena") shimmering chord changes, which Molina and her bandmates delivered with a concentration verging on obsession. Some tunes start out sounding like nursery rhymes or lullabies, then suddenly take flight like Andean condors.
Self-empowerment also resides in Molina's refusal to be bound by traditional pop or folk song structures. To put it bluntly, and despite certain parallels with Bjork, Beth Orton or the late great Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra, Molina makes instantly identifiable music that sounds like no one else's.
Gibson flew into Los Angeles on the wings of a euphoric NPR review and quickly showed why the praise is deserved. A video of her strolling through a cemetery and such characteristically melancholy tunes as "Where Have All Your Good Words Gone?" and "Funeral Song" (from her new album, "Beasts of Seasons") suggest that this artist is most comfortable, for now, on the rainy side of the street.
But in live performances, Gibson's evident natural shyness is enlivened with an assertive emotional articulateness, in her writing, unadorned singing and guitar playing. She's sweetly pensive rather than reflexively somber.
Still more gentle butterfly than majestic avian, she's one to watch.
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reed.johnson@latimes.com
