With their luminous brand of electro-pop, London-based trio Years & Years layer sweetly smooth vocals over bright and heady beats to create what they call “music you can dance and cry to.”
As winners of the BBC Sound of 2015 Poll, bassist Mikey Goldsworthy, keyboard player Emre Turkmen, and vocalist Olly Alexander have spent the last few years charming audiences worldwide by merging R&B, deep house, and classic-pop with both elegance and abandon. Appearing on 2015 Artists to Watch lists from the likes of The Guardian, Digital Spy, DIY, BuzzFeed, and Huffington Post, Years & Years' highly anticipated full-length debut album ‘Communion’ has reached No.1 in the UK Official Albums Chart, outselling the rest of the top 5.
The album sees Years & Years shape their soulful ingenuity into songs that never hold back from looking at the darker and thornier sides of love. On album-opener ‘Foundation’, a stark yet crystalline soundscape builds the perfect backdrop for Olly’s hauntingly delivered lyrics (“All the things I want/I really shouldn’t get”). ‘Desire’ unfolds as an epic and giddy dance anthem that slyly flips the script at the chorus (“I want desire/Because your love only gets me abused”). The somber strings and delicate piano work of ‘Eyes Shut’ gently conveys the pain of a slowly breaking heart, while the urgent beats and chilling piano of ‘Ties’ brilliantly echo the frenzy of emotional unraveling (“It’s so beautiful to see you lie/Are you having fun?”).
Whilst 'Communion' stands as proof of Years & Years’ complexity as songwriters and artists, it also offers songs with a more joyful and blissed-out demeanor. ‘Shine’ begins with driving beats and dreamy R&B harmonies, morphing into a full-throttle dance number. Whilst ‘Border’ displays breezy tropical beats and bubbly synth blended together to conjure up a powerful anthem of hope (“I’m going to the border/My body will be stronger/My heart will start to shine/And I will be all right”).
Throughout 'Communion' Years & Years channel an equally magnetic and infectious energy into songs, unsurprisingly the album has been described by critics as catchy-pop that is utterly of the moment.