Nathy Peluso - Malportada [Highlighter Yellow]

Nathy Peluso has moved through rap, R&B, jazz, and tango across her career without ever fully committing to any of them. Malportada is the project where she stops hedging and goes all in on salsa. Six tracks, arranged and performed with the horn sections and percussion the form demands, and sung by someone who clearly grew up with these records rather than discovering them as a concept.

"A Caballo" opens on full brass and never lets up. "Que Lluevan Flores" and "Insensata" work the classic tension between celebratory arrangement and devastating lyric that the best salsa always ran on. "No Es Otra Canción Romántica" is exactly the argument its title makes. The title track brings in Venezuelan band Rawayana and turns into the loosest, most joyful thing on the record.

The Argentine-Spanish artist has described the project as being about freedom and refusing to behave, and the performances back that up. It is the sound of someone taking a tradition seriously enough to have fun inside it.

This vinyl edition pressed on highlighter yellow 140-gram vinyl adds two bonus tracks, "Como En El Idilio" with Marc Anthony and her own "Mafiosa," collecting all eight on wax for the first time.