Since, the front man of the English group came out from his depression and became a gay icon following the enormous success of their first album Communion. While the adventure began on the Parisian label Kitsuné, the band was quickly snapped up by Polydor, which blew up their synthetic pop in the UK and elsewhere. After the hugely successful singles King and Shine, and record-smashing sales for their debut album in 2015, Years & Years have decided to strike while the iron is hot and returned to the studio as soon as the Communion tour was over.
On Palo Santo, they stick to the same recipe, weaving between R&B, pop (like with the opening track Sanctify), soul, and house (like with Hallelujah). The South African producer Black Coffee lends his talent to the record, who already made his mark on this scene with his remix of Alicia Keys’ In Common (the two tracks even share the same catchphrase, “somebody like you”). The album is a deluge of radio hits which will certainly accompany party scenes on the big screen (All For You), feature in advertising campaigns (the languid Hypnotised, already used by H&M) or become summer hits (surely Rendez-vous with its reggaeton beat, vocoded voices and ever-so-eighties synths), while Baby If You’re Over Me is a good pop song prototype. And while we sometimes fear that all that drifts into Calvin Harris’ territory, Years & Years manage to never sound cheesy.
The album, which features a futuristic world based on asexual androids in the city of Palo Santo, is also accompanied by a comic strip, a bot that interacts with fans on the band’s Twitter account, and even a cryptocurrency created especially for the occasion, the YearCoin. Their ideas know no limits!
Years & Years - Palo Santo (Short Film)
YearsAndYearsVEVOYears & Years - Palo Santo - Live (Vevo x Years & Years)
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