It was almost 10:30 before Nilüfer Yanya graced Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre in the ever so slight chill of October's first Saturday night. First opener, North Carolina-hailing singer-songwriter Eliza McLamb, started the music off just after 8:30, bringing the songs of her debut album Going Through It to the stage with a cool, quiet confidence. On her last show of the tour, McLamb made those tracks sound nearly as polished as they did on the Sarah Tudzin-produced record (no small feat), and I found myself genuinely excited thinking about people who accidentally stumbled in early and had her funny, honest songwriting hit them unexpectedly. The country twang of more recent single "God Take Me Out of LA" introduced another enticing possible direction, and hopefully she caught an ear or two who will be looking forward to hearing what's next as much as I am.
Vermont's Lutalo was on next, playing his recent debut The Academy. If you're all about unbridled guitar music, it might be up your alley; he and his guitarist barrelled through the fuzzy set with an admirable backwoods-y momentum. The sound at the Phoenix kind of made it hard to pick up on much that Lutalo was talk-singing about in his gruff tenor, with a hip-hop-indebted staccato delivery of often the same word(s) atop the same riff. Having gone in blind, I admittedly wasn't sure if he won me over — but listening to the record now, I like his sound a lot more.
The Phoenix's varying sound was an element that also played into my experience of the revered headliner finally taking the stage ("COVID was such a thing then," Yanya said of missing Toronto on her last tour behind 2022's sophomore LP PAINLESS.) I spent most of her set near the back of the room, only getting closer when a good chunk of the crowd left just before the encore — which was led by a pitch-perfect, bloodthirsty cover of PJ Harvey's "Rid of Me"; somebody shouted "Let's rock!" beforehand, as dudes do in fact. I was struck by how much better the sound was closer to the stage.
Not that any room's spatial specificities or audio issues could defeat the workhorse that is Nilüfer Yanya, who took to the stage dressed like British weather. This is the climate she lives in, and that her songs also occupy, as was nowhere more obvious than PAINLESS — my colleague Kaelen Bell brought up Dr. Seuss's grey-day musings when he reviewed it. Grey and its many shades are Yanya's palate, by choice or by chance. The universe her songs exist within is an undeniably fraught one, no doubt as a reflection of her own experience in a massively fraught world. While maybe not perfect by some antiquated traditional standard, Yanya's loop-based compositions are perhaps perfect for their very knottiness and the mirror they hold up to what it means to be a person at this (or any) moment. (Some people won't have the faintest notion.)
Opening with the quasi-title track from her new record, My Method Actor, the audience was promptly alight as soon as the singer-songwriter's unflinching voice broke through the weighty anticipation and restlessness in the room; "Keeping' me down, can't get one past me." The stormy distortion of the hook was both the grime and the steel wool that attacked it, clearing it away with its sharp-edged filaments. That might be a perfect object to liken Yanya's craft actually: a dense grey bundle of fine yet flexible threads of steely-eyed refusal, never turning away from the pain that comes along with buffing the present moment down to an impeccably polished time capsule.
The intensity of Yanya's music was undercut by her bashful banter, her speech peppered with very British "erm"s as she spoke mostly to thank the crowd, the openers, and her touring team, as well as to introduce her powerhouse four-piece backing band. From the first song, saxophonist/keyboardist Jazzi Bobbi's woodwind contributions — when I tell you I gasped when she whipped out the sax during opener "Method Actor" — added such a full-bodied, well-rounded sound that many of Yanya's compositions really do demand. Her immaculately controlled playing brought the performance to the next level.
On the topic of immaculate control, if you've listened to any of Yanya's recent work, you'll know she is a vocal perfectionist. It's not until you see her tackle these songs live that you realize how nearly impossible they are to sing, because she makes their wayfaring melodies sound as effortless as breath. She sounded more weathered than she does on record, but likewise more overcome with emotion, yelping on songs like "Ready for Sun (touch)," "Wingspan" and "Binding." There was no discernible backing track to support her, only Bobbi adding some background vocals. It's surprising that Yanya wouldn't even have a loop pedal with the way her structures circulate; "Mutations" felt like a particular challenge, especially when people near me in the crowd were being annoyingly loud during these quieter moments. Who did you think you came to see? Even when it's loud, Yanya's music is a hushed seething at its very core.
The dynamics of her vocal delivery almost serve as additional production to the repeated drum fills, as was made apparent when the band took a break to let her and her guitar take on "Heavyweight Champion of the Year" — the song that introduced me to Yanya, capturing the electromagnetism that won so many of us over on its merits alone. It truly is a marvel the way one of her vocal melodies can dart through time and space, bouncing off the walls until you find yourself at its centre.
Her discography comes together seamlessly in a setlist, which felt almost equally in favour of My Method Actor and PAINLESS. "(Like I Say) I runaway" is a standout from the latter, feeling special because of the way the chorus manages to soar after the rip-roaring guitars come crashing in in place of where a typical Yanya structure would ditty-off into oblivion. (Plus, those anfractuous guitars with their garbling, '90s-indebted fuzz are just irresistibly cathartic.)
It's not an exception to the rule, though, where it feels like a Nilüfer Yanya composition is a lockbox with a semi-hidden thesis. A line or couplet, placed unassumingly, will stick to you like a bur. Sometimes it's repeated for emphasis. Sometimes you're not even sure which one of her songs it's from. Sometimes it's the very first line, almost designed to go in one ear and out the other, like on "L/R": "Sometimes it feels like you're so violent / Autopilot." Similarly, "midnight sun" opens with the whispered devastation, "I remember everything / So I can't take back anything."
And what do you get when you find the key? An impact you need to absorb with your knees. A meditation practice that plants your body firmly in the present. A silvery gleam in the endless greyness. A shadow to follow you through the loneliness. A door that opens to another door.
"You guys have been a pleasure to play to," Yanya said before closing out the encore with "midnight sun," one of Exclaim!'s Best Songs of 2022. "See you next time," she added knowingly. The loop will bring us all back around.