Nico Yaryan Delivers More Than A Tease With Debut Album

By Sawyer Stull
Music Journalist

Artist: Nico Yaryan
Album: What A Tease
Release Date: June 3, 2016
Website: http://nicoyaryan.com/

Nico Yaryan was born in northern California to two hippies. He experienced an upbringing that consisted of skateboarding and going to local record shops looking for cheap albums he could use to sample. Yaryan’s life took a turn when his high school friend Hanni El Khatib needed a drummer for his upcoming tour. The next two years of Yaryan’s life were spent on the road honing his musical talents. He eventually met a girl in Amsterdam and fell deeply in love with her but had to leave Europe a month later due to visa restrictions. Though they tryied to make it work, the relationship eventually fell apart due to geographical and financial reasons.

What A Tease is Yaryan’s debut album, which he wrote in the turbulent time of his life. The first track, “Old Gloria,” is an amazing, heartfelt opening and my personal favorite track on the album. The song is filled with tons of heart and emotion with a rhythm you’ll find your self slowly swaying to with lyrics like “He said that he loved you, but he tricked you. Now you’re too old for new tricks.”

You can really feel the love and want in his work on the second track “You Belong To Me” which opens with just vocals and a blues guitar that has lots of reverb. The song reaches down deep as it slowly builds up the chorus with heavier and heavier constant strums.

The third track “Just Tell Me” was the debut single off the album and has a much brighter and up beat sound to it. In this song you can really hear Yaryan’s longing for his love that he’s been separated from and his hopes that their love is still strong. The album keeps the same tone through out with almost up beat songs that are accompanied by melancholy lyrics.

Yaryan’s debut album definitely does not disappoint despite how very front-loaded it feels. The songs I wanted to hear over and over were all at the beginning, there was something about them just sticks better than the second half of the album. Nico Yaryan’s music sounds almost like a combination of Neil Young and Bill Withers with each one having a heart-felt story to tell.