First full-length album for this artist, who created a surprise with her debut EP in 2022, winning rave reviews from the Portuguese-language music press and, one suspects, creating anxious expectations on their part as to what’s to come. Whether she heeded them or not is irrelevant, as she confirms with Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado that she’s got substance and deserves the attention she gets.
A solo multi-instrumentalist from Lisbon’s thriving music scene, she blends traditional Portuguese music with staccato electronic rhythms and samples of everyday life. The result is a singular body of work inspired by Bjork and Laurie Anderson, at times reminiscent of Juana Molina or, closer to home, Lido Pimienta. She distinguishes herself with a sonic inclination towards what clashe: more pronounced, almost industrial, very percussive, experimental.
She superimposes and imposes on this musical proposition a song that can be either loving or brazen, with the capacity for lyricism inspired by traditional music. She knows how to vary the intensity, interspersing the affair with an almost rap that slices and slams the table, in the present tense, all in Portuguese, often in canon. In short, she does a lot for her songs, and it works.
Apart from the loops, which stretch a little too far at times, Ana Lua Caiano offers here the album she was meant to make, a little stronger and a little more advanced than her EPs, clearly outlining the contours and colors of a universe where the past combines with the present, drawing the future. An album to put on top of the virtual pile.
