“A slow and solemn song built on droning piano, Zafar’s softly intimate vocals and strikingly poignant negative space.” That’s how we described Zoya Zafar‘s single ‘You Meant Nothing, Too’ back in January, praising the way in which the Lahore-born, Orlando-based artist approached the track which such a careful hand. “Acoustic guitar and subdued percussion eventually join too but things remain pared back to their essential elements,” as we continued. “Zafar uses minimalism not as an austere stylistic choice but as a tool to hone her music’s emotional weight, suffusing it with warmth despite its direct and unfussy arrangement.”
Such care is a signature of Some Songs, the forthcoming album from Zoya Zafar, set for release later this year. Featuring songs written in her early twenties yet developed with patience over the years, the album was originally meant to be released in 2018, only for life to get in the way. “I put a pause on music and ended up moving across the world,” Zafar explains. “I went through a very numb phase where I hardly even listened to music. Shortly after I developed an aggressive auto-immune disease that left me barely able to walk for three years. It also caused bone erosion in my shoulder making it difficult to play instruments.” But if any blessing could come from such a difficult period it was the kind of patience only gained via the slow passage of years. Time allowed Zafar opportunity to understand the tracks beyond the usual level, and thus gradually shape them towards their ideal, essential form.
Latest single ‘Sweet Talk’ is the perfect example. A dispatch from isolation which yearns for human contact, voiced against a precise dream pop arrangement which evokes both the still space of loneliness and the possibility of some freeing alternative. Zoya Zafar’s vocals barely break a murmur, though come loaded with a longing which far exceeds the given moment, as though the song condenses months of suffering into a single prayer released into an empty room.