Nilüfer Yanya – 'My Method Actor': careful, creative songwriting

Nilüfer Yanya has always been an intriguing songwriter. On her debut album ‘Miss Universe’, her genre-spanning songs were threaded together by Black Mirror-inspired voice notes, with eerie clips hooked around a fictional health company called “WWayHealth” (We Worry About Your Health). Creating a narrative around the record via this ominous organisation who promised to “worry about you so you don’t have to”, the messages also acted as a throughline, piecing together the musically varied record. Meanwhile its follow-up ‘Painless’ saw Yanya draw on more leftfield influences (like t.A.T.u.) and fuse them with – as NME said at the time – “Nirvana-style murk and jerky, Bloc Party style post-punk”.

Third album, ‘My Method Actor’, once again distils the London singer-songwriter’s creativity: building blocks of percolating beats, wiry guitar licks, lashings of grunge and lush soaring vocal melodies all accompany Yanya’s ruminative lyrics. The record saw her work exclusively with Wilma Archer (Sudan Archives, Celeste), a longtime collaborator who also worked on her previous two records. The duo, Yanya has explained in a statement, kept the team for the project small in order to “not dilute [the album and songwriting process] in any way, even if it’s coming from insecurity – ‘oh is this good?’”

The results of this stripped-back creative circle are a collection of artfully and deliberately crafted tunes, albeit one that’s missing the dusting of euphoric pop her debut boasted (à la driving earworm ‘Baby Blu’ and the Kelis-inspired ‘Heat Rises’). They’re songs that feel like they’ve been written with a razor focus, each instrumental line playing a purpose. It’s perhaps overly considered at times (the sleepy ‘Made Out Of Memory’, for example, could be elevated with a dash of spontaneity), but largely the sheer songwriting force wins out, aided by Yanya’s thoughtful lyricism.

Take ‘Call It Love’, a reflection on complicated relationship dynamics that sees Yanya sing, “Still Ironic/Still I want it/Still alone!”, later concluding with the honest couplet: “Some call it love/I call it shame”. The complex isolation of the track is echoed musically by a buzzing, overdriven riff, the somewhat jarring sonics juxtaposed over the song’s other lilting instrumentals.

Meanwhile, trip-hop sensibilities and jittering Strokes-infused guitars come to a head on ‘Mutations’, a driving cut that sees Yanya chew over “the subtle change that happens constantly as millions of tiny decisions and actions shape your being”. These small shifts are echoed in the arrangement of the song, instrumental lines and arrangements delicately altering, cinematic strings ebbing here, beats skittering there.

There are earworms too, in the form of the short and sweet opening tune ‘Keep On Dancing’, and the killer, grungy-chorus-boasting ‘Like I Say (I Runaway)’. The latter is a damning assessment of the inevitable passage of time and how it ticks by too quickly, with Yanya musing: “Does it feel like all you have/Is put in black and white?/The minute I’m not in control/I’m tearing up inside”.

It’s a record that spins the growing aches and pains of your twenties – and the realisations and decisions that come during these times – through Yanya’s musical world. And while ‘My Method Actor’ is carefully crafted and could fall into the trap of being unduly deliberated, Yanya couples these details with moments of eye watering vulnerability (take ‘Wingspan’, where she sings: “You don’t get to be devoted/Now you’re dead to me”). An honest, innovative collection that bolsters her reputation as a stellar songwriter, Yanya “undiluted” makes for an absorbing listen.