Image via Molly Daniel
Ross Olson is still waiting on that Folk Implosion “natural One” mixed with “Stupid Girl” by Garbage mash-up.
Making great art almost always requires isolation. You need years of solitude, repetition, and a commitment to knowing yourself. For Nilüfer Yanya, the 29-year-old indie singer-songwriter from London, sitting down by herself with the guitar and the pen, “writing from this space inside” led to her most powerful creative expression.
Yanya’s childhood home in Chelsea nurtured this type of intimate self-exploration. With visual artists for parents, Yanya and her siblings constantly drew, painted, took photos and played instruments. Their artistic bond extended to Yanya’s music career: Molly Daniel, Yanya’s older sister, shoots and directs all her music videos, while their mother, Sandra, contributes to set designs. Youngest sister Elif even sings backup on tour with the band. As a child, Yanya traveled with her family to visit relatives in Cornwall. There, Yanya’s uncle Joe, a former funk musician turned session player and producer, helped the teenage Yanya put together her first demos in his home studio.
While Yanya’s first instrument was the piano, she became entranced when a guitar originally meant as a gift for Molly came into her possession. Guitar playing felt more fluid compared to the rigors of studying classical piano. She gravitated toward guitar-driven punk bands with male leads; The Strokes, The Cure, and The Pixies became early aesthetic and sonic influences. While attending the secondary school Pimlico in London, Yanya studied guitar under Dave Okumu of The Invisible, whose relaxed teaching style complemented her natural inclination to tinker with her instrument.
After a stint performing in small London clubs, Yanya released her 2016 debut, the Small Crimes. The EP showcased her melodic grasp and sharp songwriting. Her full-length debut 2019’s Miss Universe offered breezy electro pop (“Tears”) and anxiety-wrecked, first date nervousness (“Heat Rises”). Still, the 29-year-old looks back on the project with ambivalence. In her view, it was marred by too many ideas, collaborators, overwrought themes. In the years since, Yanya aimed for a body of work less conceptual. Her second full-length LP, 2022’s Painless, inched closer to this lean vision.
At the heart of Yanya’s desire to make an album of just the essentials is one of her most trusted collaborators, Will Archer, a multi-instrumentalist whose credits include Sudan Archives, Jessie Ware, and Amber Mark, For Yanya’s critically celebrated September album, My Method Actor, the pair locked themselves in studios across London, Wales, and Eastbourne to workshop ideas and limit outside interference. Describing their creative synergy, Yanya says she can feel Archer activating uncharted parts of her brain when she’s riffing on the guitar. When she sat down to write her new album, Yanya became fascinated with the concept of method acting and its relationship to songwriting and performing. She was taken with the idea of actors sinking into bare and formative memories, morphing the performer and character into one entity.
Early highlight “Binding” drifts along like the routine movements of everyday life. Sparse fingerpicking spills into a dam-breaking chorus where Yanya pleads for something strong to erase her trauma. Expansive string flourishes shade multiple tracks with rich timbres. Yanya and Archer crafted a body of work steeped in desire: for the aching pain to subside, for the comfort and security of love, and for a life spent really living.
I spoke with Yanya about her new album, how it feels to perform live, her family history, and how method acting techniques pertain to her songwriting process.