Years & Years
Communion

Oh look at that, a novelty, or rather, more than that, an absolute debut! Pretty impressive, right? No, an utter trash. And what can I say, the first one to be annoyed is myself, but the flip side of picking randomly in a closed box is precisely this: I've stumbled upon a lot of insignificant/mediocre stuff and generally I never talk about it, I wouldn't know what to come up with to put together a couple of lines worth reading. However, these Years & Years really went beyond, such a concentration of triviality and sloppiness deserves to be ridiculed, especially because, if anything, they'll have no trouble finding someone paid to speak well of them and promote them to an audience that... well, mysteries of mankind: I wouldn't recommend something like this to my worst enemy, but if albums like this are able to find major labels willing to publish them with related investments it means evidently someone actually buys them. Let's leave it at that.

Do you remember Hurts, that duo of wannabe new-romantics who reached their fifteen minutes of fame three years ago if I'm not mistaken? I had the chance to talk about them too, and naturally, I treated them as badly as I could but, believe me, compared to these guys they seem dignified and even quite good; as the saying goes "once you've hit rock bottom, the only way is to dig" and in this case very deeply. According to Wikipedia, these Years & Years would do synth-pop, house, and electronic; intriguing stuff, ticking all the boxes to be appealing, the singer Olly Alexander is also of my age, well then let's give it a try, even with a certain amount of trust, class of '90 to the revival! Result? Fifty minutes literally flushed down the toilet, among all the horrendous records I have listened to (and there are some I remember almost fondly) this would occupy a very high position in a hypothetical ranking, top five at least if not even on the podium. "Communion" by Years & Years is an irredeemable piece of garbage, said in the clearest and most unequivocal way possible.

All my hopes of finding something nice, a pleasant and carefree electropop, maybe not very original, maybe even a bit flashy or a bit frivolous but enjoyable, were crushed from the very first seconds of the first listen; yes, "Communion" makes it clear from the outset the (spoiled) air around it. The scant three minutes of "Foundation" are more than enough to understand who you're dealing with, the music is at ectoplasmic levels or almost, electronic background effects and little else (and I must say that as an instrumental it would have been passable), which means putting the spotlight entirely on the singer Olly Alexander's voice, and putting someone like that in the spotlight should theoretically be an artistic and commercial suicide, but evidently, there is something I'm missing. Apart from non-existent charisma and credibility, the lad can only do two things: whine or hum over some livelier backing (which for those who know at least a bit about disco, hi-nrg, or even decent quality modern "wonky pop" can only come across as shapeless fluff), in both cases showcasing an irritating and insubstantial falsetto, so boring, stereotyped, and lacking personality that, without daring to make blasphemous comparisons with Jimmy Somerville who still resonates in my ears, it even makes me miss Mika's various "Relax Take It Easy" and "We Are Golden", at least he had a bit of imagination and managed to create some catchy tunes. Here instead, not even that, the music is all at the level of low-grade laborers in the genre, no creativity, no originality, not even a hint of flamboyance. Insignificant and intangible songs with the only partial exception of the single "Shine", which with slightly richer sounds and above all a singer worthy of the name would have been a good nu-disco performance, for the rest emptiness reigns supreme, the ballads are simply abominable saccharine dirges tinged with fake sensitivity and fabricated suffering, there's even an evident plagiarism of Fischerspooner's "Take Shelter," just to leave nothing out. For the rest, everything is pre-chewed mush atrociously sung, an impossible hybrid between Mika, Hurts, Bastille (not to be confused with the equally ignoble Baustelle), and some other pseudo-alternative monstrosity I'm lucky not to know about.

And yet, right off the bat, they debut with Universal, these are the things that truly enrage me, more than the various puppets made by De Filippi: the right connections, some promotional stunts and here you go, at least a spin on the carousel is guaranteed; well good for them, a moral slap to truly talented people with something interesting to say who struggle to find space. And there are plenty around, for instance the Roboteyes, Canadians, discovered by chance on YouTube thanks to a sparkling cover of Klaus Nomi; the singer is amazing and great ideas, they truly deserve credit and trust, yet they've still managed to achieve nothing concrete in terms of discography. In short, the anything but golden mediocrity of these miraculously successful for not better-specified reasons has truly left a taste of garbage and sour bile in my mouth, not so much for their insignificant little songs that in the span of a few days I will have completely erased from memory, it's really the "mechanism" behind it that's flawed, by now I shouldn't be surprised or even scandalized, but...