Nilüfer Yanya - "Rid Of Me"

Nilüfer Yanya explores the eeriest threads of the vicious PJ Harvey classic.

In today’s indie rock scene, Nilüfer Yanya stands in a league of her own. With her unflinching lyrics and ingenious guitar compositions, no one else quite captures the anxiety pervading today’s world. As Yanya toured this year’s PAINLESS, she dazzled the crowd with a cover of PJ Harvey’s ruthless torment of a lover, “Rid Of Me.” Live, there was a carefully choreographed discordance to her arrangement that left you in a dreamlike maze, guided only by Yanya’s distinct, rich voice. It’s hard to imagine anyone coming close to the dark and seething original, but Yanya proves herself a worthy peer with her take, officially released today.

While Harvey’s track is filled with rage, vacillating between sparse pining and unbridled anger, Yanya infuses the track with a fretful anxiety fit for our online era where connection is as fraught as ever. Producer and longtime bandmate Jazzi Bobbi builds a disorienting, apocalyptic soundscape with echoing whispers, frenzied saxophones, and heightened distortion. Yanya performs the rendition with the careful craft and restraint of a ballerina. She never gets as brutal as Harvey in her vocal delivery—instead pushing it just to the edge of the cliff, denying any sense of catharsis and finding an uneasy restlessness in the track. The effect is as chilling as the original, but something altogether new.