If you were to open a curtain into the backstage of Club Fonograma, you would find a full staff of writers discussing the year’s most meaningful music. While we’ve reached love consensus on many albums and tracks, at this point we’re mainly shifting our attention into sharing anything worthy of praise that might have slipped under our radar. Well, fellow writers, consider this next song my public For Your Consideration pick. Natalia Molina’s “Cuna de Piedras” has been haunting me for a good couple of months. It has shaken me in such a personal level that I must confess I was being selfish for not sharing it with the rest of you.
“Cuna de Piedras” is a shimmering analog recording that evokes anger, infatuation, and a seamless tenderness that make for one of the bravest numbers of the year. Indeed, we’re in front of a power ballad that also happens to be a country song. Unrestrained of any emotion (in the best of Sunny Sweeney or Marissa Nadler), Molina crafted a song about hitting bottom and getting back up into a world of nourishing cruelty (a place where happiness is only suggested). “You taught me to live like this, I don’t fear lying down to die,” she sings in a rallying cry. Shading its topics between unconditional love and conformity, Natalia Molina sings from somewhere very deep. And when I mean sing, I mean SING like singing is supposed to be done. It’s rich, it’s morphing, and it’s not conservative at all. This will really have you shouting, HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE?