Years & Years: Night Call | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Bands devolving into other line-ups, splitting into duos or trios is commonplace in the music industry. Also just as common, though you might not think it so, are bands downsizing to just one person – WHAM! was always just George Michael even if the public front included the lesser talented Andrew Ridgley and the egregious “Alan Partridge” was fond of the joke “…that was The Police, or as they are now known - “Sting”!” Even Australian music has its entrants such as Kevin Parker being Tame Impala, though that is a bit of a “cheat” as he was always the one-and-only performer until it came to live shows. In the last twelve months English indie-slightly electro-popsters Years & Years have shorn off two of the founding members leaving the expressive front man Olly Alexander to carry the standard as a solo artist but keeping the band’s name, partly for old time’s sake and partly so that he doesn’t have to rebuild name recognition - not that he’s been invisible either having successfully shown his acting chops in Russell T Davies’ hit TV series “It’s A Sin” in 2021.

Night Call hasn’t moved that far away from what the trio version of the band were doing with songs which focussed on some hefty beats and hook-worthy choruses that feature Alexander’s clear high tenor voice (and just on that – Alexander is now in his early 30s, but still looks like he is in his final year of high school and that irrepressible teenager energy is threaded through everything Years & Years have done.) Perhaps in prepping for his role on “It’s A Sin” which is a fictional chronicle of the years of the AIDS pandemic in London – a time that is 10 years before Alexander was born – he seems to have embraced the thumping dance orientated music of the period as it swung away from classic disco into the Hi-NRG and house staples which for many gay men is the soundtrack of their days fighting institutionalised homophobia and the stigmatisation of a pandemic that stalked them without mercy.

Opening with one such chunky beat laden number, Consequences, Alexander promises an album that won’t leave you as a wallflower, feet and hips move involuntarily as the computer generated voice-over of the song’s title threads around the vocals of Alexander which, while still having that sweet almost choir boy like tone, promise the subject of the song anything but such sweetness. It’s a killer of an opener. Starstruck was the first single released in the teeth of the 2021 Delta era of the COVID19 pandemic and finds some affinity with the sounds Michael Jackson explored on his breakthrough solo album Off The Wall (which both ended the 70s disco era and prophesised where dance/pop music would go in the early 80s).

The album’s title track is pure pop and it doesn’t seem coincidental that this same style was presented by Kylie Minogue on her 2020 release Disco (The Deluxe edition of Night Call features both a remix of Starstruck with additional vocals by La Minogue and their collaboration A Second To Midnight which was on her own remixed & extended version of Disco which appeared late last year.) On Intimacy Alexander seems to go two ways – a very Prince like sultry take but also layers Timbaland / Justin Timberlake styling of the early years of the Noughties. Another thing about the way Alexander has both written and sung the lyrics, particularly on tracks like the trippy Crave, along with the aforementioned Intimacy, or MA-rated Muscle that features on the Deluxe edition of the album, is the unabashed affirmation of his gender and sexuality. Not for him the coy gender-neutral love songs of the Pet Shop Boys, this is full-on male to male love, affection and sex, a welcome development in modern popular music.

Sweet Talker features a collaboration with the Swedish DJ duo Galantis which shows just how powerful the Swedish influence has been on popular music since the end of the 20th century, it’s a glittery piece of dance-pop with a lyric that’s not all sweetness and light either. Throughout the second half of the album Alexander takes a slightly slower pace away from the centre of the dance floor with Sooner Or Later and 20 Minutes (an interesting juxtaposition of a “quickie” with heartfelt yearnings for things that just can’t be). Strange And Unusual and Make It Out Alive are two of the slowest songs on the album and perhaps a few more of these dreamy poetic offerings might have made the album better balanced, showcasing the unique voice that Alexander has. The final track of the standard release See You Again echoes where modern pop music is these days with a very The Weeknd vibe, which may date things in the coming years more so than the earlier tracks which show a loving homage to the 80s in the way that Client Liaison are masters of doing.

Just like George Michael or Sting showed as they stepped away from the band that made them famous, Olly Alexander, with long-time producer/collaborator Mark Ralph, should have an equally successful solo career while maintaining the Years & Years brand name which stands for danceable, glitzy pop tunes while breaking the thrall that heteronormative ideas have held song writing in for far too long.

- Blair Martin.