Accompanying the release of her album ‘My Method Actor’ this week, Nilüfer Yanya shares her new and final single “Just a Western”.
Speaking on the track’s tone Nilüfer shares, “The melody feels freeing to me, but the lyrics are ‘there’s no way in, no way out’ and the concept is about facing your fate. I don’t know if I believe in fate but it feels real in the song.” The single comes alongside a video shot by Molly Daniel featuring Nilüfer against the dry Spanish desert landscape.
On the album ‘My Method Actor’, songs bloomed into being through unexpected ways which helped Nilüfer make better sense of her world and the ways it’s changing as she enters her late twenties; grappling with what it means to be an established musician. “For me, writing is definitely problem-solving – in the way they say that dreaming is like problem-solving. You’re like, oh, that sounds good. That looks good. That makes sense. But you don’t really know why. You’re kind of using that part of your creative brain that doesn’t have to make sense.” Her lyrics are specific and hazy at once, and sometimes surreal: she talks about the songs as though she’s trying to decipher the person she was when she wrote them.
As a whole, Nilüfer Yanya’s third album asks questions with no easy answers. It is a supple, expansive body of work that peers into the crevices of life. Exploring them with comforting strings, skittering beats, soul-tinged melodies and swooning harmonies. The album brings up questions for the ever-growing minds of listeners to ponder upon, like “Who are we?” “Why do we follow the paths we follow?” “What is at the heart of it all?”.
The focus single “Just a Western” follows Yanya’s previously released singles including “Mutations” and “Call It Love”, which NPR highlighted in their ‘songs they can’t stop playing’ podcast, title track “Method Actor”, which The FADER described as “stellar” and “Like I Say (I runaway)”, which landed a spot in The New York Times’ 40 Best Songs of 2024 list, hit the top 50 at AAA radio in the US, is A listed at BBC 6 Music, and was added to the playlist at BBC Radio 1.
Stream the album ‘My Method Actor’ here: niluferyanya.lnk.to/my-method-actorPR
