Nico Yaryan: The Best of What’s Next

On a late Monday night in Los Angeles, singer-songwriter Nico Yaryan is leading his band through the first of four August residency shows at Bootleg Theater, a warehouse-style venue adjacent to downtown. During the middle of his set, Yaryan and the band ease into “Old Gloria,” the opening song on his debut LP, What a Tease, released on Partisan Records in June. “Old Gloria” begins with simple guitar strumming and then a slow drum beat. Yaryan’s voice evokes hints of both Jackson Browne and Levon Helm. When a layer of synth comes in, the song gradually builds with anthemic power reminiscent of Van Morrison and Plastic Ono Band-era John Lennon. As Yaryan’s voice escalates in volume and emotion, it becomes apparent that this music would translate very well to larger rooms.
“Especially towards the writing of this record, I was going back to a lot of the music my parents listened to when I was growing up,” Yaryan says, citing artists such as The Beatles, Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchell. “Just a lot of cool singer-songwriter stuff and getting into the idea of writing a song that didn’t rely on what instrument it was played on. You know, you could do it on a guitar, you could do it on a piano, or you could do it with a whole band, or an orchestra, and a song was there that told a story and conveyed some sort of emotion.”
The soulful throwback grooves of Yaryan’s guitar and piano-based songs—from the gleaming “Just Tell Me” to the wistful, synth-accented title track—also can be traced to his days in high school, when he was more interested in producing than being a musician. During this period, he developed a proclivity for sampling drum breaks from ‘60s and ‘70s records.
Lyrically, much of What a Tease is inspired by Yaryan’s long-distance relationship with a Dutch student he met in Amsterdam in 2012, while he was touring as a drummer in blues-rock artist Hanni El Khatib’s band. After parting ways with the band, Yaryan had to find a job that would allow him to take weeks off at a time to fly overseas and visit her. Visa restrictions limited his stays in Amsterdam. That led him to finding work as a trimmer on a pot farm in Humboldt County, where he worked 12-hour days in the forest without cell phone service, slept in his car, and occasionally wrote music on his acoustic guitar. In return, his girlfriend periodically would visit him in Los Angeles.
“The song ‘What a Tease’ is about how my girlfriend would come visit me, and then she would leave,” Yaryan explains. “It was like a tease of what our life could be like if we lived together. It’s this bittersweet thing where you’re really excited, and it’s so great, but then when it’s gone, you realize that you’ve just been teased with the prospect of this life together. I felt it represented the theme of the record for the most part, that kind of longing and pain of being away from someone you love.”
Yaryan lives in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock, and for this interview, he met me at Echo Park Lake near downtown. When I confessed to him that I’d never been in one of the park’s pedal boats, he suggested that we take one for a ride. Out on the lake, he reflected on how long-distance relationships are bad for the heart.
“Something about her gave me this hope that we could do a crazy thing, make it work,” he says. “I really should have moved there, but I couldn’t. When she was younger, she had been a model. And then she decided to go back to school. She was in school when I met her, and she didn’t make enough money to sponsor me to stay there.”
They talked about marriage but decided that it was too unromantic to get married for the purpose of utility. Earlier that day, Yaryan received a text from her stating that she’s been listening to his album and loves it.
“She’s just excited,” he says. “She’s stoked for me. We broke up, but we’re still cool.”
Nico Yaryan grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, where he spent his time running around the redwoods and alongside the nearby river. His father worked in LA in the ‘70s, doing PR for bands. “He was friends with Cameron Crowe,” Yaryan says. “There’s this picture of him on tour with Led Zeppelin in ‘73, I think, and Cameron. It’s pretty funny.” After having his fill of that lifestyle, Yaryan’s father moved to Santa Cruz, went back to school and began teaching Environmental History when Nico was in his teens. Now his parents are divorced, and his father lives in Thailand. His mother still lives in Northern California and paints faces at fairs.
As a kid, Yaryan loved the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, took a liking to drawing, and for a time considered going to art school to become an illustrator. That was about the extent of his academic ambition.