I arrived at The Drake last Sunday and walked into its cosy underground venue excited to hear songs from Argentinean songstress Juana Molina’s three discs, Rara (1996), Segundo (2003) and Tres Cosas (2004), but not really knowing what to expect.

And in a turn of serendipity (over an inquiry about the time), I met Bob Dobbs, a former Marshall McLuhan archivist and friend to opening act Feel Good Lost-a paired down incarnation of Broken Social Scene featuring Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew as a stripped-down duo.

Feel Good Lost journeyed through three compositions, each accompanied by projected animated shorts: beautiful pieces, elliptical in narrative, mysterious with fairytale imagery. The music and video presentation worked to inform each other, which resulted in very moving passages that snuck up through soundscapes built thick with fat moving chords that announced no real destination, until it hit you. (I held back tears, trying to maintain a cool urbanite facade, but some trickles appeared-it seemed many others must have felt it too).

Soon Juana Molina took to the stage with her guitar strapped over her shoulder. She settled in next to a towering tier of keyboards, a channel/mixer box, and a gush of guitar pedals flowering out around the base of her mike stand. She launched into songs mostly off both her most recent albums.

Her crafted mix of simple melodies was developed into complex songs with the aid of her electronic apparatus-as she almost collapsed the melodies and re-layered them, I was blown away. Rhythmic patterns were accentuated as songs sailed off into beautiful bridges on the way to their conclusions. In her performance of “El Perro” (translated as ‘The Dog’), she included her uncanny rendition of barking in three distinctive breeds of doggie-vocals.

Molina (who began as a well-known television actress in her native Argentina before turning to music)’s stage presence was serene, and yet as her vocals began to bloom forth, there was no denying that you were witnessing a special explosion of vocal range, from careful whispers to punctuated intensity.

I did not know what I would be walking away from that night at the Drake, but maybe something in me was cautioning me to resist prejudgement. Instead I had the pleasure of freely experiencing a performance where the music transformed before my ears into adorned rhythms and repetitions, all carefully reconvened by this gifted artist to weave larger, richer orchestrations.

I don’t speak Spanish, but emotion and beauty can always be felt by those who hear it. And Juana Molina in her quiet passion left me with memories and feelings not soon forgotten.