The good news is that Nilüfer Yanya’s third album is on the way. But that means you have to do a little homework: take the time to listen. Not just half-listen.
His 11-track “My Method Actor” isn’t the kind of music you play in the car or by the bar or even listen to while cooking. With Yanya’s addition, songs like Jewelbox demand your attention, each note and instrument used with great thought.
The London-based singer-songwriter is unlike anyone else, delivering songs that at first seem like pleasantly soft sketches, but then reveal their depth and power, like tissue paper made of palladium.
“My Method Actor” reunites Yanya with Will Archer, who co-produces and also adds guitar, drums, piano, backing vocals and synthesizers to the song. In the publishing split, he sometimes earns the majority of the percentage, making this in many ways as much his album as hers.
The standout tracks — “Call It Love”, “Made Out of Memory” and “Just a Western” — are three that showcase Yanya’s allegorical lyrics over a bed of shifting, bright and then shadowy riptides of rhythms and melodies that might include beautiful spots of pedal steel guitar or cello. His vision is sharper and less cluttered than ever before.
There’s always an air of unpredictability, with Yanya belting out his falsetto or a wall of fuzzy guitar coming out of nowhere. On “Mutations”, the strings pop up briefly and it’s as soothing as a glass of water in the desert.
Her songs explore the pushes and pulls of love and the distance, sometimes unraveling, between lovers. “Can you tell I’m broken now, baby?/Tell me it’s okay/When I’m fading out of sight,” she sings on “Like I Say.” More hauntingly, on the title track, she reveals coiled emotions: “Spit my teeth out when you’re bleeding/I gave you everything you needed.”
This is music that is part of the world and yet not part of it. So a suggestion: grab a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, press the “play” button and concentrate on a great collection of songs.
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