Thursday, September 5th, 2024

Javiera Mena – Volver a Llorar

Don’t cry! There’s new Javiera Mena to listen to…

Javiera Mena - Volver a Llorar
[Video]
[6.86]

Alfred Soto: One of TSJ’s Olympians returns with an acoustic lament about a lover who needs to turn off their brain and look at the stars. The bridge is Javiera Mena at her best: a poignant, sinister supplicant.
[7]

Kayla Beardslee: Softer yet more haunting than her usual icy electropop singles, but as with any good Javiera track, I’m left thinking about how the music interlaces with her wistful vocals well after the song has ended. The sentimental and the spooky will inherit the earth. (Or at least the Jukebox — we’ve written Javiera into the site’s will by now, right?)
[7]

Mark Sinker: There’s something funny and sweet about outing yrself as a rigorous goth girlie — loves Siouxsie! loves shoegaze! — this far in, and while the song itself is a gauzily slight vapour, no more, it is entirely plausible that the ageless undead (who don’t have working hearts) would affect to sway a little to some pleasantly beatless bossa nova. Memory is really no longer a matter for precision for a vampire. 
[5]

Ian Mathers: The goth romanticism of vampires really hasn’t been getting a fair shake in pop culture recently, so kudos to Mena for putting it right back in there: “dare to feel that bitter suffering” and all that. And of course it’s that rare example of a sweeping ballad that actually has a pulse. Eternal life just so you can keep crying forever — what a concept!
[9]

Jonathan Bradley: A gentle guitar arpeggio suggests “Volver a Llorar” will be a polite folk exercise, but Javiera Mena remains too interesting an artist for that kind of dignified but dull work. As the track builds, strings bloom like blood seeping into water, while a bed of subtle but thrumming vocal loops hiccup an accompaniment. Still polite, perhaps, but also rather beautiful.
[7]

Katherine St. Asaph: So steep a plunge from her previous heights that it’s almost offensive. Javiera Mena is not supposed to sound like the Lumineers! The strings toward the end almost salvage it; the Porter Robinson vocal pongs do not.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: Sandra Mihanovich and Celeste Carballo came from very different upbringings but were connected by their brief romance, and their brave duology of albums Somos Mucho Mas Que Dos (We Are Much More Than Two) in 1988 and Mujer Contra Mujer (Woman Against Woman) in 1990. Milhanovich came from a well-to-do family, her uncle a successful composer (she even covered one of his favorite songs as a favor to him), her father a polo pro, her mother a TV anchor for Telenoche, which was broadcast into millions of homes in Argentina and to Celeste Carballo. Her own fascinating story was never drawn up in any English-language sites, except to say she apparently played with Bob Dylan. She also composed for Argentine TV series Dale, Loly! in 1993, then Inn Trouble in 1997, a Christine Rey Joint meant to address the lesbian lifestyle in the United States, neither of which in this time of streaming and piracy can be found, even with subtitles. These two excellent, long-forgotten icons of Argentinian punk/pop as influences influnced this Chilean maestro. This three-minute jotting of feelings was co-produced by Isidro Acevedo, producer for Jukebox visitor, C. Tangana, Sticky M.A. and Ghouljaboy, nestling Mena in neatly arranged violins while girding it with heavy kick programming, flashes of timpani rolls, and long hi-hat hits. A chirping vocal fragment bubbles forth as Mena’s warm soprano leans out of the center of the song. As for what co-writer Pablo Stipicic and Mena herself are saying, I do not know. All I can say is this: Love is complicated, but death is simple.
[10]

Reader average: No votes yet!

Vote: 0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10

Leave a Reply