When Olly Alexander gets away from the yammering vocal effects, Polari ends up a remarkably evocative listen.
As we get deeper into the 2020s, it’s easy to overlook that Years & Years had a very respectable run of pop hits in the 2010s. During a period where the “band” as a concept in mainstream pop music was in the process of being left behind, Years & Years were releasing ‘King’, ‘Shine’ and ‘If You’re Over Me’, and they all did mightily impressive numbers, with ‘King’ even notching them a number one hit in the UK. The band were always at their best when they leant into the shimmering swell, and paired with their strength for hooks and impressive instincts when pushing singles, they became a household name in the UK in the 2010s. They’d chart in the Top 40 for the last time in late 2021, at that point effectively an Olly Alexander solo vehicle, with the singer confirming the news of the the band’s disbandment onstage at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Luton in 2024.
It leaves Olly Alexander’s debut under his own name in a bit of a weird place, clearly trying to recapture the lighting in a bottle catchiness that Years & Years had at their best, but in an oddly disjointed way. At its worse it sounds like a bad mid 2010s DJ Snake imitation meets modern hyper pop with all the staccato vocal flourishes, leaving songs like the title track feeling too mechanical to land with any impact. But luckily these moments are few and far between, and more often than not these songs end up working for me. The murky sensuality on ‘Dizzy’, the wistful waves of synth on ‘When We Kiss’ and the sleek opulence and huge bass on ‘Archangel’ all highlight that when Olly Alexander zones in on his strengths, he can make brilliant pop music that can go toe to toe with anything he made with Year & Years. The issue might just be how aware he is of those strengths given how the jittery drums on ‘Miss You So Much’ and blurry haze on ‘Whisper In The Waves’ don’t hit anywhere near as hard as the rest of the album. As a rule of thumb, the brighter the songs are, the better they work for me. The shimmering guitars on ‘Make Me A Man’ are the best evidence of this.
And speaking of strengths, the writing on this album caught me off guard in the best way possible. Just like the title suggests, this is an album about the words that cannot be spoken allowed between partners, either because of a lack of commitment, or out of fear for their safety as gay men. The album’s title directly refers to the lexicon used by gay men in England to go undetected in ‘respectable society’ in the early to mid twentieth century, and I love how this album both acknowledges and celebrates the language and what it meant for gay culture, but is in equal part hopeful for a future sans shame, where hiding and suppressing those emotions will become a thing of the past.
But what pushes this album into a higher tier is the thematic complexity. If the album was just a series of hook ups for the sake of it, that would be one thing, but there’s a sense of genuine yearning that runs through the whole album that becomes text on ‘When We Kiss’, where Olly Alexander openly asks himself if he will ever find ‘the one’ if he’s operating purely on passion alone. The album centrepiece ‘Archangel’ leans into this and is the easy standout for it, as Olly Alexander contemplates a relationship with and ex who told him that he could have anything it wants if he wants it hard enough, but, despite that promise, it doesn’t work out, but there’s no anger directed towards this guy, just a gorgeous hook that goes down so easy.
It’s those great moments that tip the scales for me with this album. It might seem like just any other Year & Years album, and on some level it is, but ignore the details at your own risk.
