Album reviews: Nilüfer Yanya – Painless and Kawala – Better With You

Yanya’s second album compounds fatalistic lyrics with her murmuring, numb delivery, while Kawala offer a summer-ready soundtrack with their debut record

Nilüfer Yanya in artwork for her new album, ‘Painless' (Molly Daniel)

Nilüfer Yanya – Painless

★★★★☆

Nilüfer Yanya’s second album revels in loose song structures. The 26-year-old Londoner switches moods constantly, from cool, languid tones on the Radiohead and Portishead-indebted “Midnight Sun”, to fraught, grungy menace on “L/R”, then scratchy, industrial gloom on “Chase Me”. “This record is very instinctive,” she said of Painless, in a recent interview with The Independent. Her voice, which on 2019 debut Miss Universe strained towards piercing falsettos, has now lowered to a velvety murmur.

At times, this instinctiveness threatens to spill into apathy; Yanya allows the music to carry her along on its currents, rather than taking the lead. A breezy guitar motif scatters from opener “The Dealer” into “Shameless” a few tracks later. But there are surprising flourishes, too, like the freewheeling jazz trumpet that brings “Belong With You” to its tense climax.

Compared to the sardonic, wellness industry-pinioning of Miss Universe, Painless’s lyrics are more fatalistic, compounded by Yanya’s numb delivery of startlingly direct phrases: “You can hurt me if you feel like,” she whispers on “Shameless”... “If it feels good, then I’m alright.” Despite the record’s immersive qualities, the overwhelming effect is as satisfying as a plaster being ripped right off.

Kawala – Better With You

Kawala add some oomph to their musings with tight pop choruses and polished production (Press image)

★★★★☆

Better With You has arrived at the perfect time. As we shed our winter cocoons, Kawala’s suitably confident debut is the ideal summer-ready soundtrack for the seasonal shift.

A Camden five-piece who’ve already played the main stage at Reading and Leeds and supported indie elites Bombay Bicycle Club on tour, their music – an enjoyable amble between alt-pop, indie and Afrobeat – has always been empathic. Their 2019 hit “Wash Away the Wild” is an Alt J-indebted number on which co-lead vocalists Jim Higson and Daniel McCarthy comfort a friend fighting a drinking problem. That goal of understanding is all over this record, whether cloaked in metaphors which float across the breezy melody of “Hold Back the Years” or more direct as on “Searching”, during which the band articulate the universal anxiety of once again dipping into the dating pool post-breakup.

This isn’t to say that Better With You is all doom and gloom. Kawala add some oomph to their musings with tight pop choruses and polished production. “Marathon” is a catchy, if somewhat twee, continuation of their biggest hit yet “Ticket to Ride”, which found a fanbase of bucket hat-wearing lads after it featured on the Fifa ’22 soundtrack.

The record isn’t without flaws: later songs tend to blend into one another too easily, sitting side-by-side in middle-ground mulch. But while Better With You may not hit all the right notes, it hits a lot of them.