My Method Actor

But this is not a bad or mean album. It's an album to feel comfortable in discomfort. On the single “Like I Say (I runaway),” Yanya sings, “The moment I'm out of control/I'm tearing up inside.” It's a line that would make a therapist both worried and proud of her self-awareness. In the music video, Yanya plays a runaway bride, an image perhaps a bit on the nose. But when she loses her veil and escapes, she is not in someone else's arms, The Graduate-style, but in an empty field. He looks around at the trees, at the sky. Nothing offers her a clue as to her next move. She didn't bail because she had something better, she just knew what was in front of her wasn't right and so she did something about it.

This demarcation into the unknown is expressed throughout the album with lightly accented tracks such as Joe Harvey-Whyte's strangely steely guitar playing that appears on four tracks and Clíona Ní Choileáin's august cello performance that appears on two. No instrument is overused or underused, and none overwhelms the songs with anything overpowering. When Choileáin's instrument comes in towards the end of “Mutations”, a song with a bit of angst, I'm just relieved.

One of my favorite songs My Method Actor is “Binding,” which might be the quietest on the record. It's exemplary of the album's effortless power. her voice exudes confidence. It's a Sade-esque miracle that Yanya's singing packs such a punch while never needing to rise above a whisper. Matching her vocal performance, “Binding” strips the instruments down to the bare bones, but nothing is wasted. The song is made up of just a spare drum line, pedal steel and folkloric guitar riffs, while Yanya sings an impressionistic story about either a car accident or the end of a relationship. Maybe all three? She's not sure. In a recent interview, Yanya said of the song: “I can't be too sure, but all the lyrics leading up to it are about someone who's completely out of it, like they've had too much to drink or they're in long route and they are not really present.” He says the theme of the song is “trying to escape and get to that happy nowhere, to leave their body behind”.

That sounds good, until you realize it might not. It's nice to see the soul, but on this journey to nirvana, doesn't our earthly body deserve some respect? Obviously not. On “Made Out of Memory,” Yanya, wise and staccato, addresses this physical exodus directly with some of the album's most menacing lyrics, knife to her throat: “I'll dig my own grave.” Another venomous moment. But one done with admirable self-acceptance. The next line: “You know I'm not shy about jumping.”