in Review

Nilüfer Yanya – My Method Actor

For a long time, music publications releasing their Best of the Year lists has long driven the music conversation this time of year (or at least if you’re as nerdy about this stuff as we are at this blog). But now, that conversation has been swiftly supplanted by the populism of Spotify’s Wrapped arrival each December, and to a lesser extent Apple Music’s Yearly Replay. One artist that showed up pretty heavily on my Apple Replay this year was Nilüfer Yanya, who I’m pretty sure made a similar showing the last year she released an album, despite the fact that I rarely think of her as one of my favorite current artists. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that her albums have been “growers” for me, to the point where I thought she kind of whiffed with a real snoozer when My Method Actor first came out. Yet over time with many more listens, I’ve been proven to be so, so wrong.

Maybe it makes sense that Yanya’s music takes time to ease its way into your consciousness, since this is also how I think of the two disparate UK artists that I often compare her music to – Radiohead and Sadé. There’s this unique hybrid of moody guitar music and sultry soul that somehow intermingles to form Yanya’s sound, and I would say this sound solidifies in as cohesive a way as ever on My Method Actor. Her first two albums felt a little scatter-brained with their various genre detours, even if it was done in a way that was always intriguing. But here, her music sounds a little more laid back but also a little more confident, like she has less to prove but just as many things worth communicating through her music.

I didn’t learn this until doing the bare minimum of research that I often do in preparation for writing these reviews, but apparently Nilüfer Yanya has collaborated pretty intimately with multi-instrumentalist Wilma Archer over the course of her three albums. This just struck me as a little strange, since indie rockers of Yanya’s sort don’t seem to work with these types of super producers who build everything from scratch, but clearly they’ve got a good thing going. I’m not sure if I would say this is my favorite Yanya release yet, but regardless, the output so far has been really strong, building on a distinct sound that feels just different enough each time to bear repeated listens in the hopes of picking up on all its little propulsive intricacies.