PAINLESS

Yanya’s voice, both grounded and airy, slides across PAINLESS’ 12 expertly crafted and unusually somber love songs.

It’s the sheer power of her songwriting and her intricate arrangements that leave you dazzled and in no doubt that Yanya is a songwriter and musician of immense talent for whom the sky’s the limit.

Whether her words come from personal experience or not, Yanya’s able to swell with empathy in ways few current songwriters can convey. It’s audible how she places herself within the circumstances of a song, maybe to feel herself, but in doing so she connects with her audience on a different level.

Her voice is a tender muscle; her songs have a sinewy twist, and her loud-quiet guitar can flood in as unexpectedly as cheeks flushing at the wrong moment. What’s remarkable about PAINLESS is how she whittles almost everything down—the near-monomaniacal emotional range, the abrupt, broken language, her palette reduced to smoke and ash and nerves—and makes even more of an impact.

What she's gained in the process is more focus and confidence, and as PAINLESS proves, an intriguing foreshadow of things to come.

A beguiling good time. [Mar 2022, p.71]

Despite the record’s immersive qualities, the overwhelming effect is as satisfying as a plaster being ripped right off.

Beyond what has come before, ‘PAINLESS’ feels like a true representation of its creator; simultaneously delicate, fierce, vulnerable and fiery.

A song cycle that touches on identity, loss, and the path through it all, it’s one marked by maturity and a growing awareness of the potency of her own talents.

Painless is audibly a second album, the product of an artist with eclectic tastes spending their time focusing and refining their talent – as if its author has developed the confidence to decide that less is sometimes more.

More inward-looking than her conceptual debut, its emotive lyrics lending themselves to a more tightly focused musical palette. [Apr 2022, p.36]

For all its fear and itching paranoia, PAINLESS is a buzzing thrill.

Crunchy, ethereal, and odd in its harsh beauty, PAINLESS is a record of contradictions that Yanya spectacularly weaves together. Allowing us to see more of Nilüfer Yanya – as a person, as a musician, as a lyricist – each part is as intriguing and rewarding to dive into as the last.

While Painless is not so far removed from its predecessor that it could alienate existing fans, the closing brace of the mystic and anotherlife present some of the more interesting ideas here, exploring the complexities and capabilities of Yanya's voice, as well as her more ethereal pop chops. If this is hinting at where she's heading next, it’s very exciting indeed.

If PAINLESS is less ambitious and attention-grabbing than her debut, it sees Yanya makes strides in being more affecting.

Even if ‘Painless’ occasionally settles into a consistent, thudding groove at times, when Yanya goes full pelt, she’s at her very best.