Years and Years on Crafting Dance-Pop With Indie-Rock Edge
U.K. electronic band Years and Years jumbles together an unlikely mix of sounds, including some that don’t seem particularly fashionable — think Hot Chip and the Wanted covering Savage Garden, with a dash of Jamie Woon. They have several major hits overseas, the biggest being anthemic summer jam “King,” but their next stop is the United States: The single recently charted in the lower reaches of the Mainstream Top 40 and earlier this month, the group released their strong full-length debut, Communion.
Rolling Stone met with the band’s Olly Alexander, Emre Turkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy at their room in the Standard Hotel on Manhattan’s West Side. Black leather covered every piece of furniture, and myriad disco balls hung from the ceiling. The most prominent feature, though, was a large hot tub, which the hotel staff began to fill halfway through an interview in which the group discussed songwriting, making their first big record on a toilet and the pros and cons of orgies.
If you’re telling somebody what you do, how do you explain Years and Years’ sound?
Olly Alexander: I’d say, “Have you ever heard of the Pet Shop Boys or Rihanna?” And then, “Maybe somewhere in the middle.”
Mikey Goldsworthy: I just had that experience in the café. She was like, “What’s your music like?” I was like, “Uhhh — like electronic dance?” I just told her to watch The Tonight Show tomorrow. She was like, “Alright, I will!” So I thought that went pretty well [laughs].
How did you guys meet? What did you sound like at first?
Emre Turkmen: [In] 2010, me and Mikey met online on a band-website forum and started making music. Mikey went to a house party at Olly’s house through a mutual friend, got drunk, passed out on the couch, woke up, and Olly was singing in the shower. And Olly wanted to join the band. A few days later, the three of us were in his living room, working on this song idea he had.
Alexander: Our first song had a little distorted guitar.
Turkmen: We were very indie.
Goldsworthy: Yeah, indie: Beirut, Fleet Foxes.
Alexander: We only had one synth at that point.
What pushed you guys toward a more dance sort of sound?
Goldsworthy: You [to Turkmen] got into making beats, and I got into buying synths.
Alexander: And I got more into dance music. Because I’d started listening to it when I was a teenager. And U.K. dance music just exploded at that time — SBTRKT.
Goldsworthy: Little Dragon, as well, really pushed us towards that.
Alexander: And Emre was recording our stuff, and brought a laptop and software, and you were like, “Oh, I can make music this way.”
Turkmen: With the laptop, it was like a sandbox. Whereas I’d been writing guitar music since I was, like, 14, and every time I would pick up the guitar I would feel really — I couldn’t even put two chords together without thinking, “This is just so boring; I’ve done this before.”