Ya Tseen - Indian Yard (LP)

Indian Yard feels like a hand extended across time. Ya Tseen is the music project of Nicholas Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist from Sitka, Alaska, and this is his debut under that name. Released April 30, 2021 on Sub Pop, the album treats pop as a living space rather than a style. It looks outward, but it stays rooted. Even the name Ya Tseen, which Galanin has noted translates from Tlingit as “be alive,” sets the tone. These songs breathe.

The record opens like a lantern being lit. Galanin’s voice moves through warm synths and careful percussion with a patience that’s rare in big-tent pop. He is an acclaimed visual artist, and you can hear that attention to texture in the production. Small details keep catching the light. A guitar line flickers, a drum pattern folds in on itself, a synth bass swells like a tide. It never feels fussy. The songs glide.

Collaboration runs through Indian Yard, and it isn’t decorative. It sounds like community. Portugal. The Man, fellow Alaskans, show up and bring a flicker of stadium-scale melody that still respects the album’s quiet focus. Nick Hakim slips in like a messenger at dusk, his voice dovetailing with Galanin’s in a way that adds warmth without crowding the frame. The pairing works because the writing is strong. Hooks land softly but stay with you. The single Close the Distance builds from hushed intimacy to something that feels ceremonial, then eases back down to earth.

Knives is the one I keep replaying. It rides a deep pocket but makes room for air, like walking through a forest path that opens to water. The chorus doesn’t overreach. It lands with a gentle finality that suits the lyric mood. Born Into Rain is another standout, a song about care that refuses sentimentality. The beat is patient, the arrangement generous. It leaves space for memory.

Indian Yard is an Indigenous pop record that loves complexity. It insists that desire, grief, kinship, and resistance can sit in the same room. You can dance to much of it, but the pulse never steamrolls the thought. There is a lineage here that runs through hip hop, R&B, and art-pop, and also through songs made for gathering. You catch fragments of hand percussion that feel ceremonial, then a synth figure that glints like contemporary R&B, then a harmony that could be from a family living room. The pieces lock because the center holds.

Critical response backed that up. NPR highlighted the album’s blend of tenderness and critique. Pitchfork praised its clarity and sense of place. That checks out when you sit with it. The pacing is deliberate. Sequencing matters. Ballads and mid-tempo burners trade places in a way that keeps the record moving without flattening its dynamics. By the time the closing stretch arrives, you feel like you’ve been guided rather than pushed.

Sub Pop pressed it with care, and the format suits it. This is a front-to-back listen, and Indian Yard vinyl lets the low end bloom while those small percussive details sit where they should. If you are hunting for Ya Tseen vinyl or trying to buy Ya Tseen records online, this is the copy you want to live with. It also plays well as part of a bigger shelf. Ya Tseen albums on vinyl make sense next to modern R&B, experimental pop, and the Pacific Northwest avant-rap lineage that has always found a home on Sub Pop.

What sticks after the needle lifts is the feeling of balance. Galanin writes about love and land with the same gravity. He makes room for joy, then pivots to survival, then back to joy. It never reads as a lesson. It feels like a life. That is why Indian Yard endures beyond its rollout moment in 2021. It is welcoming, but it doesn’t sand down its edges. It offers a map, but it knows you will bring your own weather.

Whether you are browsing a neighborhood shop or scrolling through vinyl records Australia late at night, keep an eye out for Indian Yard vinyl. The songs reward attention. They invite return visits. And in a year when so many albums chased volume, this one chose presence. It still rings.