More about: Nilufer Yanya

Each year, the consistently excellent End of the Road Festival hosts an artist further down the line-up who becomes massive by the time the circus comes into town. Defying logic, this artist never appears on the main Woods Stage, inevitably causing a scrum to catch a glimpse of their highly-anticipated performance on a smaller stage they have already outgrown.

So it was that, in 2018, the Big Top tent operated a ‘one in-one out’ policy when IDLES took to the stage. In 2019, the same tent was a sweaty mass of bodies for Fontaines D.C.’s post-Dogrel show, and last year, the audience for Arlo Parks’s Garden Stage show spilled well beyond the usual boundaries.

A glance at this year’s line-up suggests that critically-acclaimed, multi-talented Nilüfer Yanya could be the festival’s 2022’s buzz act. Not quite headliner material at the moment, though with one brilliant album—2019’s Miss Universe—down, Yanya is poised for a big year. The Londoner’s second album PAINLESS arrives on Friday (4 March) with its early cuts showing great promise.

‘Stabilise’, released last year, is an urgent indie track with Yanya laying down husky, spoken vocals for the verse leading to a beautifully-sung chorus (it featured in many publications’ top songs of 2021). ‘Midnight Sun’ is an absorbing rock track which builds to a stunning crescendo, ‘Anotherlife’ is a reflective pop track musing on love and ‘the dealer’, released yesterday, kicks off with drum‘n’bass percussion before morphing into an upbeat indie song with a killer acoustic guitar riff.

So, what does Yanya think about album number two? “It’s a lot more cohesive than the last record. It’s quite rocky and grungy,” she reveals. “It does feel like a band but it’s interesting because, for me, this record is about the voice for me. There’s a lot more of a focus on the lyrics and the vocals. That focus is quite streamlined. It is like you’re listening to a band a lot of the time.” 

Was it intentional? “I don’t think it was but it was something I picked up on early in the process and I really liked it.

“I do feel like now I’ve done the first album and I’m doing the second album, you’re thinking about how it’s all going to come together on tour. I wanted everything to flow and for people to connect with it a bit more.”

The early singles certainly point to a more cohesive band sound than on Miss Universe and previous EP releases. At twelve songs, it discards the interludes that were a feature of her debut’s WWAY HEALTH concept, largely perceived to be a send-up of the wellness industry.

Interpretation of her music is something Yanya is comfortable with, as she details when summing up the lyrical content of PAINLESS. “I kind of want to leave this one open to see what everyone thinks it’s about,” she shares. “I realise with the last record, I tied this storyline into it and everyone was like: ‘oh, it’s about the wellness industry’, ‘oh, it’s about anxiety’, ‘it’s about this’ and I was like: ‘oh, it’s not really’. I just thought it was a cool idea to put with music.

“I have my own ideas [on what it’s about] but nothing too concrete. For me, I feel it’s about environments and how they make you feel. Because I wrote a lot of it during the last two years, I think a lot of it is about feeling trapped but seeing a light and an escape route. That’s what it’s about for me.”

An escape route of sorts awaits Yanya when she embarks on a European tour next week—with UK and Ireland dates in Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Manchester and Bristol preceding a homecoming show at the Electric Brixton and a month-long stint in North America before festival season. Yanya’s tour will be her first since before the pandemic.

So, how is she feeling about it? “I’m feeling good,” Yanya answers. “I’m excited for the tour to start because it will feel more natural and will release the tension.”

What can fans expect from the shows? “Hopefully, they’re good,” she offers self-deprecatingly. “We’re gonna do a mix of the new and the old stuff. People need time to digest the new songs, or even listen to the record. We’ve been rehearsing loads so hopefully there will be a new energy. After a while, you don’t exactly lose your energy but you get comfortable. I think this is gonna be a bit more raw at first, a bit more unnerving. The energy that comes across from the new will give it an edge. I hope that comes across on stage.”

Later, when discussing what’s on her playlist at the moment (Alabama Shakes, Big Thief, SAULT), she reveals that she’ll be doing a cover of a PJ Harvey song on the tour.

Meeting over Zoom, Yanya cuts a down-to-earth, friendly figure who is clearly a deep thinker. When asked to describe her music for a hypothetical person uninitiated in it (ta difficult thing to do as Yanya flits across genres in her own original way) a familiar gripe emerges. “I suppose rock band makes sense because that’s the set-up of it,” she says. “It’s got guitar, it’s got drums, it’s got bass. We play it like we’re in a band when we do the songs live.

“When I do it myself, it’s more singer-songwriter kind of style. It is a rock band but I feel like a lot of times in the past people try to say that it’s R’n’B and soul, and it’s not really. It definitely has influences from lots of genres. I listen to lots of different types of music. It’s definitely rock music. It’s my take on it.”

The R’n’B reference has cropped up in previous interviews and is clearly a source of annoyance. The inference being that this is based on how she looks as half-Turkish, quarter-Bajan and quarter-Irish, though a British artist. Identity is something which matters to Yanya. She is learning Turkish to tap into her father’s roots and is keen to visit the Caribbean where ancestors from her mother’s side are from.

She explains: “My dad’s from Turkey. He came over to do his MA and met my mum here. He always planned to go back but he hasn’t. My mum was born here but her mum’s from Ireland and her dad’s from Barbados. It’s weird I was born here and I’ve always been aware that I’m not English. I’m British but not English. I always thought it was more random than it is.

“I started learning about the British Empire and realised I was a direct product of that in a way which is weird because it’s not really a good thing, but it’s why I exist. My aunt was doing a lot of research on my family tree and read about how the big sugar merchant who bought my ancestors in Barbados and sold my family into slavery basically. 

“These people profited and profited and profited, and built whole countries and built ports and made countries rich. It made sense. It’s why we’re here. Reparations haven’t been paid but big sugar merchants were paid compensation by the government. It makes me think: why am I still [in England]?”

Unsurprisingly, Yanya’s family history feeds into her deep sense of inquiry. “My mum’s [sur]name is Daniel but that’s a slave name,” she continues. “She wants to encourage others with slave names to dig deep into their family histories and find out who’s making money and who’s still profiting from this ‘cos people are still profiting from this.

“Unless you hold people accountable, the cycle goes on and we keep moving in circles. It’s a big topic but it’s very interesting.

“Now I need to make sure the reparations are made. It’s a big responsibility to stand up for things and make things better for everybody.”

Yanya is an artist with a keen social conscience, demonstrated by her re-release of early EPs on vinyl for the Inside Out record which raised funds for Artists in Transit, a collaborative not for profit group she founded with her sister Molly that delivers art workshops to displaced people and communities in times of hardship.

What would she say is the most ethical way to buy music? “Definitely the best way to consume music is to buy the record,” she states. “Buy the CDs. I don’t think they sell tapes now. So, however you’re willing to buy it, that’s probably the best way ‘cos then it’s going more directly to the artist.”

Accompanying the press release for ‘Midnight Sun’, Yanya is quoted describing the meaning behind the song as ‘seeing the beauty of confrontation and the necessity of rebellion’. Is Yanya a confrontational person? “I’m not confrontational but I do see it as a good trait,” she admits. “Obviously it can get you into trouble. That’s the reason I’m not confrontational. I don’t like getting myself into difficult situations. I’m not always very open about things but I do think it’s necessary to be confrontational sometimes.

“I guess there’s a balance to be had but I’m more on the side of: ‘okay, cool, let’s go with it’ instead of being like: ‘actually, it’s not what I’m feeling’. I have to really build myself up to do that.”

And what should we be rebellious about? “As a society, and the past two years have shown us, there’s so many things we should talk about more. We’ve got to the stage where people have got uncomfortable with the way things were.

“Everything is a mess and it’s always going to be like this so it’s fine. We would be okay with that when we shouldn’t be. The necessity to stand up and say those things to make changes for the better—or at least talk about them!”

When pushed on what, in particular, she could be referring to, Yanya elaborates: “There’s been so much. I was thinking a lot about, this country specifically, Black Lives Matters protests. It was really beautiful seeing so many people protesting that summer but then...it didn’t exactly die down, but it was a moment where you wondered if it would create change. It didn’t disappear completely but it fades away and you wonder why that is.”

What might be a good next step after the Black Lives Matter protests? “Just keep pushing, I guess,” Yanya offers. “Keep taking it to the next level.”

This critical approach Yanya adopts with her views on social justice is something she applies to herself, too. When asked whether she thinks PAINLESS is the best thing she’s done, Yanya responds: “Yeah, I think so. I think it’s so much better than the first one! I listened to the first one a few months ago and was like: ‘what?’ I was thinking: ‘who let me put this out?’"

This in reference to an album with an aggregate score of 81 from 23 reviews, according to albumoftheyear.org. The critics and many others fell in love with Miss Universe so it’s surprising that Yanya can be so dismissive of it. She bats off the idea that she’s a perfectionist but adds: “I have high standards.”

This yearning to be the very best explains her collection of great songs so far in her career. Yanya’s demanding schedule means she feels she isn’t quite achieving her potential. She puts no pressure on how big she could become as an artist but has plenty of drive and determination to achieve the high standards she sets. She says: “I feel like I’m not really fulfilling my potential because I think I need more time and space to really go a layer deeper and focus. I want to be more proud of my own music, my own output.”

Scary to think just how much better she can get considering how good Yanya is right now. Listen to her music or catch her on tour now before the secret’s out of the bag and her Latitude set is overflowing.

PAINLESS arrives 4 March via ATO Records.

Issue Two of the Gigwise Print magazine is on sale now! Buy it here.

More about: Nilufer Yanya