Juana Molina answers our video call from a hospital bed, reclining in a green T-shirt with two cannulas in her hand. She has done her back in while also playing Whack-a-Mole with hernias, two last year, and two new ones now. “Do you know those toys, made of little pieces of wood, and you press the bottom and it goes” – she makes herself floppy, mimicking a push puppet – “that’s exactly how I was yesterday.” But now, says the 64-year-old Argentinian musician, “I have so many painkillers, that I …” She wobbles her eyelids, gurns and gives me two thumbs up.
For the avoidance of doubt, Molina seems entirely with it, and insists we continue when I offer to reschedule. She is ultra precise on the technical odyssey she undertook to make her new record, and also extremely funny company, cheeky and withering about anyone who’s too serious – or worse, boring.
