Olly Alexander was inspired by missing late night “hookups” and clubbing for the new Years & Years album.
The 31-year-old musician – whose band has became a solo project earlier this year – is set to release new LP ‘Night Call’ in January and he’s described the record as his “escape”.
Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, he said: “It’s a good feeling. After the two years we’ve had, I’ve become a solo artist. So making this record has been challenging.
“But it was like my escape. So I put all the kind of stuff I was missing, like going out, dancing, having sex. Just put it all into the record.
“And it’s just such a good feeling because you never know when something’s going to be finished, if you’re ever going to put it out. But it’s coming out.”
Olly revealed he sees the album as a collection of tracks to be “played at nighttime”, and its title came naturally.
He explained: “Well, ‘Night Call’ the song kind of came sort of towards the end of the writing process and recording process.
“But I knew all these songs, a lot of them about hookups or about kind of encounters at nighttime. So it was an album that I imagined being played at nighttime.
“And then I was thinking of really other terms for hookups. And ‘Night Call’, it pleased me because I felt like it worked on lots of different levels.
“It just felt like something that would… It was a little mysterious, but it felt sexy as well.”
And while Olly wanted to “keep sadness as far away as possible” on the new material, he admitted it “crept into a couple” of tracks.
He added: “There’s one song called ‘Make It Out Alive’, which I wrote before the rest of ‘Night Call’, but I love the song and really wanted to keep it in.
“That was from a much darker place where I was just, ‘Wow, things are really feeling a bit tough’. And then another one of the songs called ‘See You Again’, really just came from after my gran died. I was, ‘Oh, I’d love to see her again.’ “