Seven years is a long time to wait but for fans of Nilüfer Yanya, Tuesday night at Liberty Hall was worth every second. The London-born singer-songwriter and guitarist made her long-awaited return to Australian shores this week, touching down for a three-city run, her first visit since her debut shows in 2019, when she was still riding the wave of her breakout album ‘Miss Universe’. A lot has changed since then. Yanya has gone from cult favourite to one of Britain’s most acclaimed alt-indie artists, releasing two more albums ‘PAINLESS’ and last year’s critically acclaimed ‘My Method Actor’.
At Liberty Hall on Tuesday, she arrived with a full live band and an setlist that stretched across all three records, with support from local artist GAZAL warming up the room. The hall was intimate enough that the quieter, more introspective moments landed with real weight, but with enough room for the guitar to really sprawl.
Yanya’s voice is warm and slightly smoky, capable of slipping from a murmur into something cutting with barely a warning. Her guitar playing is both rooted in jazz and rock but constantly slipping between them, producing a textured, layered sound that’s genuinely hard to categorise.
The set drew heavily from ‘My Method Actor’, an album that found her at her most refined, and from the ‘Dancing Shoes’ EP, a breezy, guitar-pop companion piece she released last July with long-time creative partner Wilma Archer.
With a slot supporting Lorde’s European tour on the horizon, 2026 is shaping up to be Nilüfer Yanya’s biggest year yet.
