Albums Of The Year: Nilüfer Yanya's Universe Is Vast, Immediate, And Now

Imagine in case you can outsource your own self-care. As a substitute opposed to ambling mindfully toward enlightenment, you’d simply dial a hotline to connect to a service that did your fretting for you. “We worry about and also you don’t have to,” a robotic monotone would tell you once you’ve connected, purging all your anxieties for total mental clarity. That’s the pitch, anyway. The reality, as you may imagine, could be much grimmer.


That scenario runs through Nilüfer Yanya’s debut album, Miss Universe, and however the music itself doesn’t sound the least bit grim. As an alternative, the project is a cosmic collection that finds a new adventure in each song. While in, the London singer-songwriter flaunts her greatest gift, versatility and virtuosity of the electric guitar, which she makes bark (“In Your Head”), wobble (“Paradise”), glimmer (“Melt”), and more. Every song she creates stays grounded in her voice, a soulful fog educated behind her twenty-something years of actual experience. Even as she delivers a frantic skyward plea (“It isn't safe here, please take me or they might”), Yanya sounds totally liberated. That’s the wonderful trick Miss Universe pulls over its 17 songs, 53 minutes, and endless repeatability: You’re right there with her, even as you vanish indoors your own head.


It’s tempting to label Yanya a upstart, especially since her early SoundCloud uploads had her fielding offers from music executives at 20. Nevertheless she spent years perfecting her songcraft with sparse compositions led first by her gentle strumming and later colored by the mournful saxophone of her childhood friend and collaborator Jazzi Bobbi. Translated here to a larger scale by adding a full musical group, the songs go supersonic. Where lead single “In Your Head” could work as a luxury, minimal affair without drums or distortion, producers John Congleton and Sean Cook beef it up, padding Yanya’s presence with positively Bonzo-sized drum pounds (courtesy of session ace, R.E.M. And Beck studio mainstay Joey Waronker) and glittered-up guitar lines. (Congleton and Cook are two of ten listed producers and co-writers; each track lives in its own galaxy.) The result is a pat summary of the whole album. It’s one thing to be moved by Yanya’s quiet finesse in a little nightclub, however Miss Universe beams her directly to a bombastic arena stage without losing any of her music’s immediateness. You simply can’t miss it.


Sprinkled across this newfound musical dynamism, Yanya and producer Wilma Archer place interludes pondering questions of existential wellbeing. WWAY Health, the fictional service offering the outsourced care said earlier in this piece, feels so antiseptic and tacitly apocalyptic that it adds a clever, modern through line to an album that already feels timeless just nine months right after its release. These brief lulls remain separate enough from the main sonic action — the whirring carousel that concludes “Baby Blu,” the space-rip she surges toward on “Angels” — that each merely ends up a heady palette cleanser for the next tune-up.


"How much control do you desire to give away?" Yanya told MTV News earlier this year about the album’s overarching concept. "For everything you get, you give something away. And I think my conclusion is that your mind is the last safe space, really, and in case you can't look right after your mind and you also can't keep it safe, in case if you need to open it up to everything, then you have no control. It's sort of a scary thought, really."


A lack of control could be scary for an artist as exacting as Yanya. She’s spoken about her love for the guitar music she grew up listening to — The Strokes, The Libertines — although a recent playlist feature revealed she’s lately been grooving to Nigerian duo Lijadu Sisters and Amerie’s eternal “1 Thing,” and also covering Frank Ocean. Even as Miss Universe is categorically a rock album that relies on rock-album hallmarks famous guitars and percussion), its most thrilling moments come once instruments either fall away totally, leaving Yanya’s hearty voice in the spotlight, or as soon as the notion of genre totally evaporates. “Tears” and “Heat Rises” are celebratory electro-pop, nevertheless they’re followed by the austere “Monsters Under the Bed.” Once you peg “Melt” as trip-hop, it locks into a laid-back soul groove. And because she’s still a storyteller at heart, Yanya closes things down alone, singing and strumming “Heavyweight Champion of the Year” into the empty air.


This is much less an obliteration of genre than an organic reflection of how we create and consume music in the late 2010s. Even Miss Universe’s cadre of producers and co-writers follows the model of most mainstream contemporary pop albums, each lending a specific vision to a song. Nevertheless the melange is all Yanya’s. In per year whenever the hugest songs consumed seemingly every aspect of our culture, demolished specifications fortified by previous decades, and potentially even nailed the coffin of genre shut for good, this isn’t even reactionary or revolutionary. It’s just the way things work now.


Right before she takes a bow on “Heavyweight,” Yanya narrates one final interlude. Her automated voice adds a chance to join the WWAY Health program’s second phase, only to rapidly contradict herself: “Sorry, the selected function no longer exists. Please give up.” The plea falls on deaf ears. By that point, you’ve already given yourself over to the album’s charms. Miss Universe is ready for her crown.