Lido Pimienta - Miss Colombia

Over the course of a two-decade career that’s taken in a host of musical disciplines and that has consistently been imbued with political inflections, there’s a sense that Lido Pimienta’s first record to be put out through a conventional label, rather than self-released, should represent a mission statement of sorts as she reaches her widest audience yet. Accordingly, she bristles bitingly throughout ‘Miss Colombia’ at what she sees as the failure of her compatriots to hold their government to account for rising inequality and violations of indigenous rights. If the subject matter is typically sprawling, though, ‘Miss Colombia’ feels like a relatively streamlined effort from a musician who’s long made it her business to break down borders of genre.

There’s a relatively steady instrumental palette, which is heavy on synthesisers, choral backing vocals and traditional Latin drumming, and it lends a throughline and a sense of consistency to the likes of ‘Coming Thru’, a minimal pop track on which she sings in both Spanish and English, and cuts like ‘Pelo Cucu’ and ‘Te Queria’, which are more freeform in their arrangements. There’s no question that a little bit of Lido’s formidable live energy is lost in the translation here, but ‘Miss Colombia’ remains a vibrant, accessible introduction to her boundary-defying body of work.