Born in Argentina and raised in Spain, Nathy Peluso made her debut outing in 2017. Critical and commercial success has seen her rapidly ascend to music stardom. Although relatively unknown in the UK, she commands a significant presence in the global music landscape.
Peluso’s success is thanks to her genre-defying music, which flips between finessed pop Urbano, romantic salsa, and gritty hip-hop. This artistic versatility is more evident than ever in her live show. The opening Bond-like epic, CORLEONE, is quickly brushed aside by the energetic rap number APRENDER A AMARTE, and the sumptuous bachata of Ateo.
On-screen and on stage, Nathy Peluso is a larger-than-life character, just watch the music videos for Mafioso or her Bzrp Music Session. A case in point, the rapid switching between styles is a testament to her skill as a performer. Her vocals are faultless. Be it rattling off rap verses with machine-gun-like precision between high kicks and shaking her hips or belting out a pitch-perfect ballad in front of the wind machine, she doesn’t miss a beat.
Watching the show, one feels the push and pull of an artist caught between these two sides: the vintage boleros or the swaggering finger-gun hip-hop. Her theatrical performance style and charisma mostly hold the set together, but the show sometimes feels a bit confused – especially as there’s no other production to boost the performance.
The stage is mostly empty, bar the band to either side, and she performs against a curtain in the Roundhouse, which I kept expecting to drop and reveal a full-blown production, but alas. Instead, she has a variety of props brought out for certain songs and then quietly removed. Most random of all is the giant barbed wire fence, carried on stage exclusively for the song LA PRESA.
The show’s underwhelming direction does Peluso a disservice. Her music is genuinely groundbreaking in its cross-over style and experimental production, but as a live show, it feels slightly under-cooked.
