Spectreview: NIIKA – Close But Not Too Close

NIIKA’s debut album, which deftly mixes Melbourne neo-soul with the artful arrangements of peak Dirty Projectors, is superb.

-LIGHT CORAL-

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“Blue smoke
On every note”

Chicago-based artist Nika Nemirovsky is coming out with a debut album, and damn it’s great. Really great. Like, “why-aren’t-more-people-talking-about-this-act” great. Close But Not Too Close, which follows an EP she released three years ago, deftly mixes Melbourne-style neo soul with the artful arrangements of peak Dirty Projectors, all tied together by Nemirovsky’s malleable, flourish-laden voice. Her closest analogue might be Hiatus Kaiyote’s Nai Palm; you’ll hear those familiar stylings a lot, especially in tracks where the current runs stronger, like early single “Girl of a Arc” or opener “For The Key”. NIIKA’s voice is comparatively less explosive and more measured, which is fitting on an album full of smoky, slow, lush numbers like the gently blooming “Blue Smoke” and the indelible, moving “The Cage”. While several of its tracks lean longer than the average pop track (barring the wonderful bossa-nova interlude “Oh Delila”), it’s because Nemirovsky builds her songs in ways that allow them to move organically, almost liquidly. As such, Close But Not Too Close sacrifices recognizable structure for discovery, which is way more than a fair tradeoff.

Lyrically, NIIKA’s songs read like classic indie: half-opaque, approaching themes and topics from the safe distance of poetry. Her familial ties to Uzbekistan, and her resulting immersion in Russian culture, lends a subtle specificity to the images she conjures throughout the record. Grains of gold, sand, perfumes, cigarette smoke and feathers weave through NIIKA’s stanzas like trail markers. The result is a consistent meshing of cool surreality with exacting introspection, a combination that also pairs well with the soothing nature of these songs. Enjoyable purely on a surface level with enough depth to dive into, Close But Not Too Close is exactly what you’d want out of a debut; a confident sound by a confident voice.

Recommended for houses of mirrors.