Olly Alexander
(Picture: Getty Images)Given the dizzying amount of praise showered on Olly Alexander in recent years, you might fear that he would take himself a bit seriously when performing – under his band name Years & Years – at his homecoming Wembley Arena show. But nothing could be further from the truth. The BAFTA-nominated, chart-topping Renaissance man gave a slick performance on this London date of his Night Call tour - but with the humour and impish charm of someone who clearly still knows how to have fun.
The evening began with Alexander getting hot and sweaty in a phone booth. He opened with Night Call, an out-and-out pop banger about waiting for a lover to answer a booty call. Dressed in an oversize black latex coat and hip high boots, he dramatised winking lyrics like “so push a button, make a move” with a troupe of five seductive backing dancers all vying for his affection.
It was typical of the playful eroticism of the album Night Call, which Alexander wrote as an antidote to the numbing loneliness of lockdown. Muscle, a thumping number with an alluring bass line about a steamy rendezvous in a club, was accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek video montage featuring topless men. During Consequences, Alexander made use of a ballet barre, surrounded by dancers in motorbike helmets as if posing for a fetish version of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories album cover (Night Call does owe a heavy debt to the legacy of the French electronic duo, after all).
Even when dipping into songs from Years and Years’ previous two albums, the set was almost entirely roof-raising pop-synth and disco bangers. Among these was a cover of the Pet Shop Boys’ It’s A Sin, the song that soundtracked the devastating Channel 4 AIDS drama of the same name for which Alexander was nominated for a Best Actor BAFTA. Alexander’s probing into the back catalogue of his band delighted fans, especially the club classic Sunlight, a collaboration with the Magician that was released in 2014.
The mood did take a brief reflective turn near the end of the show, when Alexander, dressed in a flowing white cape, sat down at a piano to play two acoustic numbers. After distilling 20 Minutes and Eyes Shut to a potent shot of heart-twanging chords and purring vocals, he allowed himself a rare vulnerable moment, telling the crowd, “After the last couple of years, this means everything,” and thanking both his fans and his mum for their support.
Never one to be dull at his own party though, he jumped up almost instantly with a wide grin on his face, as the pealing of synths marked the beginning of the next gargantuan track. Not that anyone was complaining. Alexander’s show was a triumphant showcase of the power of pop to liberate, titillate and be buckets full of fun.
