After releasing sets of EPs for the past few years, Nia Archives is striking big on her debut album. In ‘Silence Is Loud’, she amplifies the magnitude of her sonic and writing touchstones, allowing the overall album to become intensely whirling with impressive production and writing yet hampered by awkward performances and a couple of underwhelming melodies.
Building her stature since 2020, Nia Archives arrives with her blend of jungle interspersed in between pop meshings that comes off with delightful results per passing EPs. With the uprise of UK Garage, breakbeats, and poppier blends of drum and bass as acts like Pinkpantheress start popping over into the scene, Nia Archives is also showing growth and success within the scene as her EPs got more lively and distinctive, where her jungle frenetics get intermingled with more poppier melodic structures without sacrificing the whirling experimentations in her work. Embracing those two different qualities even further in ‘Silence Is Loud’ shows more layers and drastic stylistic flairs that Nia Archives is going for in her debut album.
Within this project, Nia Archives goes full throttle within her usual scopes of Jungle that’s weaving through contemporary R&B and Soul, showcasing more expansion where there is a lot more flow, style, and expression to be shown. Coming past her EPs comes Nia Archive rolling open bursts of intense and vibrant flair coming through on the compositions and especially the production, courtesy of Nia Archives herself who did a lot on building the soundscape of the album as well as Ethan P. Flynn who not only helped on the production but also played a lot of the organic instruments on the majority of the album, amplifying the vibrancy even further. With this synthesis, the album pulls in a lot of colorful moments. The driving bass line that’s wheeling across the buzzy synth lines on ‘Tell Me What It’s Like?’, is an aspect that also comes through on ‘Crowded Roomz’ and ‘Unfinished Business’ where the grooves just have enough melody to race across the punchy textures on the drum and bass rhythms amidst the set of guitars, pianos, and synths kneaded deftly into these cuts, the cycling rhythms that underscore the more carefree tone of ‘Cards On The Table’, ‘Silence Is Loud’ that peaks up with the synths and drums sparking aflame, and ‘So Tell Me…’, a cut originally from ‘Sunrise Band Ur Head Against Tha Wall’ that still fits well on the project as it closes off the album with an atmospheric tinge in the rhythms that shuffles along on its way.
Continuing through that expressive flair, the writing shows a tangled, dizzying picture within the overall arc of the project. Exploring her relationship and her identity that, despite all of the fun that Nia Archives experiences within the romance and newfound fame, a conflict is worming within it. It both goes internally and externally, as Nia Archives grips with her loneliness and anxiety causing her to overthink and guard herself even more, a behavior caused due to the trauma coming from her murky relationships with her family, bad experiences with past lovers, and the feeling of overworking through that success that are sadly starting to show over on this relationship. One that’s starting to deflate as her lover is becoming less caring and more abusive towards her, eventually becoming a breaking point for Nia Archives to step away from that relationship as there is no more love within that relationship, only pain.
Yet with all that intensity coming from the compositions, instrumentation, and writing, all of that unfortunately gets tapered away as more listens are given. One of the reasons for that is more on the melodies, where despite having dazzling instrumental layers all across the board, it doesn’t overshadow how sometimes spotty the main melodies are that tend to breeze through rather than stick within their brisk rhythmic tapestries. And the other reason that pulls the record down is Nia Archives’ vocals themselves, relying upon her upper register which may be an intended decision to keep up with the intensity of her ecstatic brand of production and writing, yet is a decision that falls flat as it only highlights the limits of her vocals where it does not only come off thin and stilted especially on cuts like ‘Nightmares’ where she tries to break out of her mold that only results in a really awkward performance, but also does not amplify the writing that has a lot of emotional layers yet are not exactly reflected well through Nia Archive’s singing combined with the undercomposed main melodies.
Despite those flaws, Nia Archives still provides an album that has a bulk of quality within her sonic and writing wheelhouse, expanding her creative production palette with a blast of colorful jungle rhythms swirled around organic instrumental foundations that elevates the tunes even further alongside writing that also has grounded emotional depth and enough detail to paint an arc that’s conflicted and confrontational. But as much as there is that to praise over, it doesn’t overshadow the weakness coming through some of the middling melodies and especially the vocals that try to break through but escalate to odd performances that don’t allow the feelings in the writing to echo louder. There might still be noise that slips through the silence, but there are enough patches for the emotional essence to be felt inside that quaint, yet electrifying space.
Favorite Tracks: ‘Silence Is Loud’, ‘Cards On The Table’, ‘Crowded Roomz’, ‘Tell Me What It’s Like?’, ‘So Tell Me…’, ‘Unfinished Business’
Least Favorite Track: ‘Nightmares’