British singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya has been charting an upward trajectory ever since her acclaimed 2019 album Miss Universe first brought her into the public eye. Since then Yanya has been steadily gaining notoriety in the stream-o-sphere, while at the same time racking up such feats as opening for Adele, and touring with legendary rock troupe Roxy Music. Yanya’s latest album, My Method Actor, follows the diverse template set by her previous work with a more natural, mature-sounding evolution of her singular blend of nearly every popular music idiom. That said, while it’s true that My Method Actor, and Yanya’s sound in general, defy easy categorization – her music has been compared to everyone from King Krule to Siouxsie and the Banshees – the album’s parts are a bit more readily quantifiable than their collective whole. It’s second track, “Like I Say (I runaway),” for instance, falls pretty firmly into the “rock” camp, taking cues from the alternative heyday of the ’90s made fresh by way of Yanya’s unique artistic sensibilities.
“Like I Say (I runaway)” begins with soft, steadily insistent percussion set under some tantalizing acoustic guitar riffing, together combining into a hypnotizing cycle. Their staccato phrasing and clock-like repetition create a simmering sense of tension locked just beneath Yanya’s rich alto. The chorus turns the key on that lock with the introduction of layer after layer of lush, fuzzed-out electric guitar. Yanya muses on themes of escape and urgency in an off-kilter flow that perfectly latches into the underlying rhythmic loop. The end result is one part contemporary indie-rock, one part Collective Soul/Smashing Pumpkins-style alternative, with a dash of shoegaze for good measure, all delivered in a stylistic portmanteau that is Yanya’s through-and-through.
“Like I Say (I runaway)” is the sort of song that one thinks they’ve might have heard a million times, when in fact they’ve never heard it at all, in the same way that genius feels obvious in hindsight. And for all that, it’s but one of an album’s worth of similarly pristine tracks within the kaleidoscopic totality of My Method Actor. Together they prove Yanya to be a talent deserving of a seat a the table with the myriad of artists to whom she is compared.