(Polydor)
The actor-singer’s solo debut proper looks to 1980s gay clubland for inspiration, but plays it too safe under all the retro synths and stammered-vocal effects

It isn’t melodramatic to say that Olly Alexander’s debut solo album comes at a crucial moment in his career. Four years ago, his ever-escalating success seemed assured: his brilliant performance as Ritchie, the lead character in Channel 4’s lockdown hit It’s a Sin, had been garlanded with award nominations; his band Years and Years, who had scored a string of huge hits in the 2010s, had been repurposed as his solo vehicle; and he was a star turn at the 2021 Brit awards, reclining on Elton John’s piano and singing the Pet Shop Boys song that gave the series its name, surrounded by drag queens and queer clubland luminaries.

But the subsequent Years and Years album, Night Call, met with a muted response – it wasn’t a flop, but nor was it anything like as successful as its two predecessors – and last year Alexander gamely entered a Eurovision song contest that became mired in controversy over the presence of Israel. His song wound up coming 18th, provoking yet another round of why-oh-why handwringing about the UK’s dismal record in the contest, in which the Daily Telegraph excelled itself, opining that Alexander’s performance failed because it was too gay, thus presumably upsetting the many viewers who annually tune into Eurovision expecting a feast of unreconstructed heterosexuality.