"A straightforward message is not interesting for me," says Nilüfer Yanya, calling from her home in east London. Yanya punctuates her sentences with her bright laugh or an introspective hmmm and shades in her remarks with a running metacommentary. "I get inspired writing about something that's a bit less clear." My Method Actor – Yanya's third album, released this month – makes good on her belief that the strongest ideas often exist in the in-between. A rumination on slippery but intriguing themes, including memory and nostalgia, the album sees her develop her rich style of storytelling.
While it's easy to let Nilüfer Yanya's latest single, "Like I Say (I Runaway)," play on repeat, and to get lost in the hum of the six-string, the low rasp in Yanya's voice, the kick drum keeping a metronome's steady beat, the vulnerability in her verses draws the listener into the present moment: "The minute I'm not in control, I'm tearing up inside," she sings, a fitting admission for an artist who is self-professedly nervous to let others take the reins.
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Now, though, the focus is on adapting this insular record for a live context – following one-off shows in London and New York, Yanya is back in rehearsals with her band, preparing to take her album on an extended tour of the US and England this autumn. While performing in front of an audience didn't come naturally to Yanya, it has forced her to be more comfortable acting as a larger-than-life version of herself. "When I was younger, I didn't have much of a sense of self. I had a smaller idea of who I was," she remembers. As she readies herself for the forthcoming shows, she admits that she's acclimated to the life of a working musician; that earning a living by making art has become almost "normal."
As our conversation begins to wrap up, and with the focus so often on her past, it feels natural to ask: What would 20-year-old Nilüfer think of her life nearly a decade later? She wishes that her younger self could see that life is bigger than an album cycle. "It's a bit weird thinking you can live another way," she says "You don't have to just weigh your life up against music. I think I'm realizing that I can just be me, and that's okay."
My Method Actor is out 9/13 on Ninja Tune.
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But if the album is deliberately ambiguous in its storytelling, it's anchored by a focused sound palette. Rejecting the multiple producer approach of the first two albums, she invited only longtime collaborator Will Archer – who has also produced for Jessie Ware and Sudan Archives – to helm the production. They both wanted to approach her album as a complete work rather than a piecemeal collection of songs. "Before, I'd always had a different track produced by somebody else. I think that really affects the overall end result quite a lot," she recalls. Choosing a single collaborator is a deep expression of trust for her: "I realize now that [using multiple producers] was probably coming from a place of insecurity, not trusting myself to trust somebody else with the album as much as me."
Yanya speaks about the songs she and Archer wrote as almost having a consciousness of its own: "The song's already in there, and you have to dig out the right words that fit underneath the melody," she explains. Impressionistic lyrics are illuminated by her vocal inflections, and a chorus might look like new words over a shared melody. You can try to parse who or what she's referencing as she sings, "Do you feel dumb applying all that sand and dust to science?" on "Faith's Late," or you can just listen to her voice tip into a mournful falsetto, sensing the lost love that she's grieving.
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Now, though, the focus is on adapting this insular record for a live context – following one-off shows in London and New York, Yanya is back in rehearsals with her band, preparing to take her album on an extended tour of the US and England this autumn. While performing in front of an audience didn't come naturally to Yanya, it has forced her to be more comfortable acting as a larger-than-life version of herself. "When I was younger, I didn't have much of a sense of self. I had a smaller idea of who I was," she remembers. As she readies herself for the forthcoming shows, she admits that she's acclimated to the life of a working musician; that earning a living by making art has become almost "normal."
As our conversation begins to wrap up, and with the focus so often on her past, it feels natural to ask: What would 20-year-old Nilüfer think of her life nearly a decade later? She wishes that her younger self could see that life is bigger than an album cycle. "It's a bit weird thinking you can live another way," she says "You don't have to just weigh your life up against music. I think I'm realizing that I can just be me, and that's okay."
My Method Actor is out 9/13 on Ninja Tune.
