[ad_1]
“I’m not into the idea that people have to suffer for art or for music, or for any job actually…”
“I forced [the concept] a bit because I was self-conscious about the music: I felt like the songs didn’t sit together as well as an album maybe should,” she concedes. “Whereas this album I feel is much more focused, and the songs speak for themselves a lot more. But then, I don’t know if it’s my job to decide if it’s good or not… I don’t think analysing things is helpful; I find it quite debilitating.”
Debilitating or not, her analysis rings true. For where ‘Miss Universe’ intrigued with its genre-hopping hybrids and nebulous lyricism, ‘PAINLESS’ dazzles with a newfound musical and thematic directness. Tonally, it’s melancholic, from the ‘In Rainbows’-esque indie of ‘Midnight Sun’ and tightly-wound post-punk of ‘Stabilise’ to the hypnotic, synth-flecked groove of ‘anotherlife’. And it’s a ‘less is more’ palette that makes the very best of her versatile voice, which is gravelly and insouciant one moment, silvery and emotionally vulnerable the next.
Thematically, ‘PAINLESS’ provides perhaps the most vivid insight into the singer-songwriter’s psyche yet, which is no mean feat considering how guarded she can often seem in conversation. It’s not that Nilüfer is uncooperative or morose, you understand: it’s more the shyness of a self-professed introvert. And her lyrics convey that reticence, couching very personal musings on desire, loneliness, and claustrophobia in purposely abstract imagery.
“Opening up felt good, actually,” she says of the evolution, adding with a laugh: “Though I didn’t realise that’s what I was doing until I’d finished the album. But yeah, it just felt good. I don’t know if [that change was inspired by] me growing up and wanting to connect with people in different ways, or just wanting to connect with people more because of the way the last couple of years have gone.”
Nilüfer actually started writing for the record at the start of 2020, coming up with ‘L/R’ and ‘The Mystic’ before putting the project on pause for a year. Looking back now, she realises she was struggling with a form of writer’s block caused by pandemic-induced apathy. She shrugs, “It’s not even like I didn’t have anything to say: it’s more like I didn’t even want to say something. Life was just so static.”
Ultimately, it was collaboration that drew her out of this temporary funk, but that sense of oppression lingers in the lyrics of a song as suffocating as ‘Stabilise’. Featuring the refrain “I’m going nowhere,” and referencing high rises and dogs fighting, it’s a song firmly rooted in Nilüfer’s corner of West London, just a stone’s throw from Grenfell. “There’s a big class divide, and that becomes even more apparent when you’re not travelling, and always in the same area.”
Though always an active member of her community, during lockdown the singer threw herself into her work with her sister’s social outreach project, Artists In Transit, which she raised funds for with her vinyl-only compilation ‘Inside Out’ at the end of last year. Founded following their 2016 trip volunteering in the refugee camps of Athens, Artists In Transit provides art workshops to vulnerable children in times of hardship, an initiative Nilüfer describes as “a nice way to show solidarity, but a nice way to make friends and connect as well.”
[ad_2]
Source link
