Years & Years - Communion, album review: 'heartfelt tunes'

Debut album from synth-pop band is uncomplicated but punchy
Punchy pop: the debut album from Sound of 2015 winners Years & Years (Image: Richard Gray/EMPICS)
Richard Gray/EMPICS
Andre Paine10 July 2015

★★★☆☆
(Polydor)

Synth-pop bands have often cultivated a sense of detachment, a coolness to complement the precise electronic rhythms. For Years & Years, aloofness is not on the agenda: this is an uncomplicated debut of huge, heartfelt tunes. Apart from the contemplative tracks that bookend Communion, it rarely departs from the punchy pop of No 1 single King. Sometime actor Olly Alexander (he was a vampire in Penny Dreadful and one of the violent poshos in The Riot Club) is a showman with a sweet, soaring voice that dominates these songs whether he’s emoting like a boy band wannabe on Eyes Shut, being multi-tracked into a vocal barrage on the shimmering Ties or warbling like a Nineties house diva on Desire. You suspect that were this album to flop, it might single-handedly kill off the modish retro sound that prevails in dance-pop. There’s not much chance of that happening, though.

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