Critic Reviews

• Where previous records such as Miss Universe and 2021’s Inside Out were sparse, Yanya’s excellent new album, PAINLESS, marks an evolution into a much fuller songwriter.

  Rating: 100/100
  The Telegraph

• PAINLESS is a step forward from the excellent Miss Universe and will delight fans and new listeners alike. It's the kind of album you can listen to on repeat and discover new joys on each listen.

  Rating: 90/100
  Gigwise

• The singer-songwriter’s striking second album excels at a kind of subtle disclosure, relying less on power than it does texture and immaculately sparing detail.

  Rating: 84/100
  Pitchfork

• The power of PAINLESS is its willingness to stand in the eye of that unseen hurricane, submerging itself in disorientation and contradiction and unknowing.

  Rating: 80/100
  Exclaim!

• The follow-up to Nilüfer Yanya's debut album, Painless finds the London-based artist exploring more ethereal territory.

  Rating: 80/100
  The Skinny

• In her most purposeful work yet, the singer-songwriter has tightened up the nuts and bolts and shaken off the excess. Unafraid to linger on darker moments, ‘PAINLESS’ refines the standout qualities of her debut and reinvents them with a new sheen.

  Rating: 80/100
  The Forty-Five

• Crunchy, ethereal, and odd in its harsh beauty, PAINLESS is a record of contradictions that Yanya spectacularly weaves together.

  Rating: 80/100
  The Line of Best Fit

• With a hand-around-your-throat kind of urgency, ‘PAINLESS’ feels like the purest form of poetry: raw and inescapable.

  Rating: 80/100
  Dork

• The London songwriter roots the sound of her accomplished second album in classic alt-rock, its beautiful melodies contrasting with mysteriously bleak vignettes.

  Rating: 80/100
  The Guardian

• It’s a confident return, one that pits her dreamy, sonorous elements against a willingness to experiments, and absorb other voices and approaches into her own.

  Rating: 80/100
  Clash

• If PAINLESS is less ambitious and attention-grabbing than her debut, it sees Yanya makes strides in being more affecting.

  Rating: 70/100
  AllMusic

• It doesn’t always feel like Nilüfer’s attention has been on making a fresh attempt to mangle pop as inventively and freely as she has before, but the skills she has mastered over the course of her career are on impressive display.

  Rating: 60/100
  Loud and Quiet

• The problem is that the beats are too often too relentless – they don’t drop out or shift often enough.

  Rating: 60/100
  musicOMH