Nilüfer Yanya – My Method Actor
Nilüfer Yanya‘s debut album Miss Universe, for lack of a more eloquent choice of words, rocked. Largely ignoring the stereotypical capoed-Martin-at-an-open-mic tropes that often follow young singer/songwriters, the British-born artist opted for big sounds to wrap around her oblique and impressionistic lyrical sensibility. She kicked the doors open with a generous helping of fuzz on “In Your Head” and closed it out with a similarly amplified denouement on standout “Heavyweight Champion of the Year,” the space in between twisting through moments of occasional subdued introspection but far more often showcases for Yanya’s sonically rich musical statements. Even at her most restrained, as on the spacious noir disco of “Baby Blu,” scant moments of silence give way to something more elaborately layered and rapturously climactic.
Where her 2022 sophomore album PAINLESS found Yanya easing into more intimate and understated musical spaces, it still primarily found her speaking loudest through mesmerizing guitar riffs and skittering drum patterns on a series of songs that sometimes felt like an analog version of IDM-curious Radiohead. Her third album and first for Ninja Tune, My Method Actor, is both her most lushly arranged and nuanced release, comprising the kinds of songs that reveal goosebump-inducing detail on a second, third or fourth listen. Though Yanya’s music has never been less than thrillingly magnetic, these 11 songs are warmer and more subtly wondrous, drawing you in closer to the speaker as she reveals ever-so-slightly more of the actual human feeling behind the songs, exploring the curious question of identity as both a performer and a young person on the verge of turning 30.
The opening strum of chords in leadoff track “Keep On Dancing” provide a foundation for what eventually becomes a mesmerizing array of moving parts: a clattering drum loop, a bassline that’s physically felt as much as heard, and a haunting, ethereal layer of guitar that coats the background in a Cocteau Twins-like eeriness. “Keep On Dancing” also serves as a kind of mission statement for the album, Yanya raising a toast to everyone struck by a nagging uncertainty about their direction and place in the world: “What you looking for?/Shut up and raise your glass if you’re not sure.” And in the brash fuzz and strum of the awesome “Like I Say (I runaway)”, she laments, “The minute I’m not in control/I’m tearing up inside,” only to shift away from those insecurities toward a Prince-like move of projecting oneself as a kind of rock-star savior: “It’s coming through your speaker, yeah/It’s coming through your bedroom/I know you’re gonna meet her, yeah/She’s coming to your rescue.”
The redoubled sense of intimacy on My Method Actor correlates to a recording process that allows in few collaborators, Yanya having made the album essentially in its entirety with producer/creative partner Wilma Archer, who has also worked with Jessie Ware and Sudan Archives. The two tap into a deceptively spacious approach, wherein each song carries a great deal of depth but never feels overstuffed, whether through the sparse snap of drum machine against gentle guitar licks on “Binding” or the arrival of breathtaking guitar harmonies on the darkly shimmering grooves of “Mutations.” Few songs here are as fascinatingly complex as the title track, in which bass and guitar intertwine in a helix of low-key funk, erupting into a squall of distortion as she examines what it means to channel something real under the guise of playing a role—actor, performer, or otherwise: “But I mean it, and I don’t feel it/It’s just too strong/Gave you everything, it’s gone.”
One of the singer/songwriter cliches that Nilüfer Yanya has long avoided is confessional songwriting, and she’s admitted to being “quite reserved naturally” when not onstage. My Method Actor doesn’t necessarily change that, but she lets her guard down just enough to express something universal: the question of how much of ourselves we let slip through the version that we let everyone else see. In doing so, she’s pared back some of the volume but not necessarily the bells and whistles, creating an album that feels like her richest even at its most gentle. Yet even with her most ostensibly vulnerable songs, Yanya continues to guide us through unseen passageways and strange corridors, perhaps only giving slightly more of herself, but an abundance of everything else.
Label: Ninja Tune
Year: 2024
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Nilüfer Yanya : My Method Actor
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