Conceptualizing the arch of a songwriter's artistic development can feel like an act of senseless problematization. Unlike judgments of musical works rendered along much clearer axes — for example, the ability to make people dance or sing — the effectiveness of a songwriter's work can feel elusive. With any luck, the intentions of the artist and their collaborators might be known and used as inputs to render those judgments more fully grounded. Otherwise, we're left moored to our own idiosyncratic interpretations and untethered by our often-fickle ability to feel the feelings of another through song.
The task is doubly difficult when dealing with an artist like Nilüfer Yanya, whose craft is as much about elaboration as it is about refinement. 2022's phenomenal PAINLESS balanced the scales of musical comfort and adventurousness adeptly, mixing brash production with alluring vocal melodies. On Yanya's third full-length My Method Actor, those same scales are just as present, but the balance feels much more precarious. There's a felt confidence in Yanya and producer Will Archer's direction, but the songs are thrillingly unclear as to whether that's the direction of stasis or change.
One element tipping My Method Actor in the direction of change is Yanya and Archer's shifting use of distortion. Album highlights "Like I Say (I runaway)," "Method Actor" and "Call It Love" make use of burlier and fuzzier distortion tones in their respective choruses, as if to scrape a layer of grime over what are otherwise polished-sounding pop tunes. '90s alternative rock was already a palpable touchstone for Yanya, in her vocal phrasing and in the instrumentation of PAINLESS. This time, the application of those rock elements is much more jarring, small eruptions of noise that interrupt the proceedings — ruptures that destabilize Yanya's writing in real time. Other production choices display a similar desire to continue the momentum of experimentation. Violin and cello on "Ready for Sun (touch)" and "Faith's Late" lift the songs into unnerving and romantic territory, respectively, and the addition of lilting pedal steel slides to the final verse and outro of "My Method Actor" displaces the listener at crucial moments to stunning effect.
The power of those lap steel slides highlights an underlying thread of My Method Actor's DNA, albeit one that predates the album. One feature of Yanya's recent output is her focus on loop-based song structure. Several of Yanya's songs are built around a mostly unchanging drum groove and guitar chord sequence, with verses, choruses and bridges differentiated only by the vocal melodies and additional complimentary layers stacked atop. While those loops are immensely compelling in and of themselves — as on "Mutations," for example — they also render the tonal, rhythmic, and melodic environment of Yanya's songs mostly fixed. Once you've reached the first chorus of several of these compositions, you've likely travelled to just about everywhere the rest of the tune will go. As a songwriter, Yanya is less interested in outward expansion than she is in holding to the present, placing herself in sonic stasis until an answer — or an even more pressing question — reveals itself.
Stasis isn't all bad. Staying in one place can be exhilarating if the place is right, and that's the case on My Method Actor. The bones of these songs are interesting in their own right, dotted with gentle reminders that there's a hip-hop and R&B element to Yanya and Archer's productions, small details that form a necessary glue. Many of the best songs here have a track of acoustic guitar running throughout, something that sometimes feels like a textural choice, adding the percussive element of clanging strings to an already-propulsive rhythm section. Other times it might be a nod to a song's simpler origins.
Regardless of how one feels about being forced to hold still by these songs, there's something immensely rewarding about My Method Actor, and much of it has to do with Yanya's progression as vocalist. There's a sophistication to the vocal phrasing on "Call It Love" and "Made Out of Memory," a newfound confidence that alone is enough to propel My Method Actor to heights not frequently reached on past albums. In fact, it's through Yanya's vocals that the tension between the album's predictable and unanticipated qualities feel most resolved. If not for the probing lyrics and the meticulous vocal delivery, the songs might feel too bogged down by Yanya's past. Instead, My Method Actor proves the perfect companion for sitting with the uncertainty of whether one should move ahead or stay where one is.