Nilufer Yanya - Painless
Painless, Nilufer Yanya’s sophomore LP, is a saccharine and grungy portrayal of a love seen from the side of heartbreak: where hate becomes happiness, comfort becomes claustrophobia and pain becomes painless. With the mix of unpolished, crunchy beats and sauntering, breathy vocals, we see Yanya exposing a fiercer and more aggressive persona from her debut Miss Universe. Experimenting with a more grunge and post-punk sound infused with art pop and indie rock, Painless cleverly captures the juxtaposition of the numbness and despair of the bitter end to a relationship with danceable, springlike grooves that mark a transformation into a less malleable and yet more expressive self.
‘the dealer’ opens the album with a bouncy drum beat and lazy, loosely strummed guitar with glossy vocals that sound like a rockier Jorja Smith. The track slowly increases in tempo and texturally gets more complicated with layered vocals and a vicious backbeat that wains in and out of the mix. In the chorus, she sings: “I miss the kind of patience that breaks your heart / Baby it’s me that’s taking us apart” with the pounding drums in the background. This is followed by a sparse middle eight with only Yanya’s hypnotic vocals and the shoegazey muddiness of guitar in which she laments on the word “patience”: “Patience, there she goes / Cadence set in stone”.
If ‘the dealer’ sets Painless off with an unrelentless search for clarity in the sadness her partner feels about the breakup, then ‘L/R’ seems like her answer. With the bluesy bass rhythm and simple drumbeat, Yanya creates an expressionless soundscape that she interjects with her monotone, moody and often monosyllabic spiels with the occasional falsetto thrown in.
‘shameless’ sees Yanya showcasing her impressive, power pop vocals that echo the magnitude and vulnerability of Sade. This is when Yanya is at her vocal peak on the album. It’s a striking ballad with a ticking drum machine and an alternation of two-chords on guitar but finishes with a short piano passage overlaid with drones and Yanya sweetly singing: “You can hurt me (Like when you caught me, graceless) / If you feel like (Until you fall it’s painless)”. ‘stabilise´ opens with a colourful and intricate guitar arpeggio reminiscent of Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes / Arpeggi’ but dowsed with a more post-punk edge with the tight and abrasive thrash of the guitar and apathetic voice that can be likened to Florence Shaw’s from Dry Cleaning. ‘chase me’ is another standout track on Painless. The scratchy, boisterous beat sounds like Bjork’s Homogenic mixed with the prickly and disquieting sound of the XX. The moody art-rock captures the paranoia of the lyrics (“Through corridors your love will chase me”) and the obscurity of what she is trying to say. Suddenly, it’s not clear how she feels anymore: whether the haziness she describes is from a place of love or hate.
The latter half of the album is perhaps more hopeful and sees her peeling away at the scabs that have formed. ‘try’ is a collection of vignettes about her trying to forget her ex. The melting and trance-like guitar sequence matched with Yanya’s enchanting bird-like lulls sees her gaining more authority over her thoughts. ‘belong with you’ takes a jazzy turn with the short snippets of saxophone. The last track ‘anotherlife’ sees her being perhaps her most raw on the album, admitting that she just wants her ex to believe that she’s fine, which may have been the entire intention of Painless up to this point. Overall, Nilufer Yanya has delivered a cracking second album that hits all the right places you want a break-up album to hit: your heart, your head and your body to dance all of the sorrow away.
7/10
