The term ‘indie rock’ is thrown around a lot, often meaning everything and nothing, and often being associated with that horrible sameness and the image of a guitar-wielding quasi-weirdo trying very hard to be different-but-not-too-different. That’s part of the reason London-based artist Nilüfer Yanya is such a breath of fresh fucking air. How do you stand out in a sea of guitars? Whatever it is, Yanya’s cracked the code with a deep British cadence and a mastery of paranoid, head-spinning love ballads on her debut album Miss Universe. If you listen to one new artist in 2019, you should make it her.
So how did this all come to be? The London-Turkish singer-songwriter is a twenty-something guitarist who’s hovered around blogs lately, releasing crystallised gems every six months or so (Golden Cage hooked us). She’s mastered effortless style and she has ‘the look’ – beautiful but relatable. All that potential is realised on Miss Universe. The beats are scuzzy and glorious, the singing is deep and sometimes epic, and the writing is vague but familiar, much in the same way that Frank Ocean can say a little and mean a lot.
And Yanya has a born ability to write a hook. Take lead single ‘In Your Head’, which is all over the place in a deliberate way, talking about not being able to read signals (‘when it hurts just to touch/but you can’t dull the pain/cause it’s telling you things/that make you sound insane’). It’ll bury in your brain. Or standout track ‘Angels’, about the weird feeling of a relationship going well and then freaking out about the fact that deep down you know it will end horribly one day. Yanya belts out the hook, only half-sure of her own thoughts (‘cause if we fall now what would happen?/now that we’ve wandered up too high’). There are moments like this across the album that worm into your eardrum. It’s much to do with Yanya’s voice, deep but soothing and able to weave through clashing percussion elegantly.
The other strength of Miss Universe is the instrumentation. She plays guitar, but that’s about the fifth most interesting element of most of these beats. ‘Melt’ is a glorious deep cut with a snazzy saxophone trailing her on the bitter hook (‘I bet your brain cells won’t last/I bet they cling to the trash’). Yanya repeatedly uses her own vocals – often pitched lower – as a backup singer and adds to the entire feeling of paranoia that plagues the album (as pointed out elsewhere, this could’ve made for a good soundtrack to Maniac). Other songs delve into digi-pop, like the catchy ‘Tears’ (which even uses some auto-tune), or dream-pop, like mid-album standout ‘Baby Blu’. The entire affair makes Yanya particularly hard to pin down, and the charming, robotic interludes alluding to mind-control compliment the warped feeling of the album.
All this is surprising in such a young artist. The writing feels fully-formed and genuine – these really do feel like the thoughts and musings of a very confused 21 year old trying to figure out who she’s supposed to be. But it’s equally odd to see a young pop-indie artist be so creative and zig-zagging with production without feeling forced. Every turn on this album works. Yanya navigates all the various highs and lows that the instrumentation offers, knowing when to keep it light and cute, and when to wail desperately. ‘Heavyweight Champion of the Year’ ends the album, and it’s the right choice. That song has all the slow build-up, self-doubt and paranoia that makes her music so drawing. But it also ends gloriously and emphatically, like an enlightening internal scream.
This is an album by someone who is confused. But it’s also someone who has found out how to translate that confusion into something beautiful and relatable. This is pop music by a new face. It’s been years since an independent indie artist has come through with such raw promise. She could be anything and everything. Right now, though, she’s just figuring out how to make it to 25.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL 