Nilüfer Yanya shows command of her craft at Fine Line

Nilufer Yanya and Ada Lea performed at Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 14.Darin Kamnetz for MPR

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May 16, 2022

One could call Nilüfer Yanya a “Fallon Angel” following her appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on March 12. For her third album, Painless, angel iconography is deliberate archetypal fodder ready to be consumed, interpreted, and punned. But the 27-year-old West London artist’s signature angel wings were noticeably missing from her performance at the Fine Line on Saturday, which was her first headlining appearance in front of a Minnesota crowd.

The venue's constrictive parameters encouraged a hushed, yet limitless, expression like a secret gathering. No stylistic garnishes. The only decoration consisted of idiosyncratic patterns projected on a nondescript backdrop. If an artist's primary purpose is to hold a mirror up to our world, harmonizing the feminine, the body, sensuality, and nature through their choice of visuals and sounds, there's no need for a costume or a flamboyant, maximalist set design; three humans and their instruments on a stage can do the trick.

Ethereally gliding over chords for an hour, she effortlessly played her tunes with her eyes closed like a show-off breezily riding a bike without touching the handlebars. Well-crafted lo-fi, electric guitar riffs underpinned by simple baselines, and her collaborator’s Jazzi Bobbi's saxophone and Korg synthesizer, reflected a general lack of ornamentation.

Nilufer Yanya and Ada Lea performed at Fine Line Music Cafe — Nilüfer Yanya and Ada Lea performed at Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 14.
Darin Kamnetz for MPR

As the title suggests, her opening song "midnight sun" was like light shining through, but also the darkness: “Don’t like whenever I’m not in pain, peeling back, not noticing, the blood and bones beneath my skin.” "belong with you," the second track, was notable for its charming aggression and the distorted guitar composition melting into the droll, contradictory lines, "I don't even like you, bitch" and "I belong with you." "chase me," her third song, is a rather low-energy offering that never really climaxes but is still an infectiously catchy tune. "The Unordained," from her Miss Universe EP, was a strong follow-up, but it fell short of the mark. Same with "Baby Luv,” one of her most popular songs. By contrast, the audience was moved by "In Your Head," another older song.

The night's highlight was Yanya's PJ Harvey cover, "Rid of Me." The verses, supported by Bobbi’s saxophone, fully utilized Yanya's lower range. The chorus provided a stark contrast of a harsh, fleeting peak, an urgency building up into despair before moving into three back-to-back lackadaisical tracks: "another life," "stabilize," and "trouble."

The delicacy, sweetness, and sharpness of Yanya’s voice is like a crisp, foggy daybreak, a characteristic shared by established British rock bands like the Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, Joy Division, and Bloc Party, to name a few. The textured and fuzzy tonal cracks in her accent resound powerfully as authenticity and edge, their unrefinedness and rawness complementing the disquieting, high-adrenaline soundscapes, playfully imbuing them with a casualness and ease.

However, Yanya's casualness is undermined by the intense tunnel focus of someone who is neither casual nor at ease. Her seriousness, as well as her endearing shyness, were obvious the few times she addressed the crowd. She didn't perform much crowd work, no dancing, ecstatic jumping or call and response initiations punctuating her crooning. Not once did she flutter like a winged creature. She mostly stood there, commanding complete attention with little effort.

Because her drummer fell sick on a previous tour date, there was less percussion than usual for the Minneapolis show, and there was also no bass player for a chunk of time in the middle of the concert.

The repetitiveness of "L/R" made it a modestly danceable standout song of the evening. SImilarly, “the dealer” provided much needed blood-pumping catharsis. The final song, “Heavyweight Champion of the Year,” dialed the crowd back down to a whisper before they erupted in applause and shouts.

Many of the songs on Painless are about pain-induced numbness, when the intensity of the suffering has been reduced to a distinct lack of feeling. They’re a thematically and sonically interesting departure from Yanya's earlier work, which explored love and betrayal with a juvenile charm. It's no surprise that, throughout the night, Yanya's earlier work failed to resonate as deeply as her new, more-mature material.

Yanya, gradient blue-white mist electric guitar in tow, looked unfazed by a technically sparse, no-frills production, delivering a generous and intimate presentation without the built-in protections — musical embellishments and stage gimmicks — that lesser artists often rely on.

If angels are from heaven, then Yanya wasn’t too far from home on Saturday. Producing a halo effect, her charismatic aura transformed the Fine Line's dingy atmosphere into a paradise, delivering an audacious, stellar performance that belied her years, demonstrating both her internationally acclaimed indie-rock style and tenacious, hard-boiled spirit.

The line for the merch stand had grown so long by the end of the night that fans were practically tripping over one another to buy souvenirs commemorating Yanya's impressively bright, if imperfect, Twin Cities debut. She stayed well past her set, hanging in the background, signing merch and taking masked selfies with concertgoers.

Nilüfer Yanya and Ada Lea