Now aged 34, it’s basically a slur to still be calling Olly Alexander a twink. He never really liked the word in the first place, finding it a bit reductive, but he got slapped with it nevertheless, given he rose to fame around the same time as other svelte and youthful white boys with Queer appeal, such as Troye Sivan and Timothée Chalamet. Scoring his first UK number one with ‘King’ while fronting the synthpop band Years & Years back in 2015, Alexander has been seriously bothering the pop charts ever since.

After two dance-pop Years & Years albums (Communion went straight to number one in the UK charts and Palo Santo made the top ten), he parted company with his bandmates and put out Night Call by himself, confusingly still under the Years & Years moniker. Polari is his first solo album in his own name, and the power-pop vibes are strong. 

Certain Years & Years tropes remain: we find more thirsty-coy love songs and hopelessly devoted anthems of lust, all dripping with sensuality and the unapologetic confidence of a proudly out man. But the production from collaborator Danny L Harle pings things up to a higher level. A radio-friendly level with commercial appeal for sure, but you can definitely imagine certain tracks helping Queer dancefloors light up too.

The album title track, named after the underground-gone-mainstream slang of the Queer community, feels like a late 80s throwback. There are elements here of the cocky swagger that made Whitney Houston first fancy Bobby Brown onstage, or the tough beats of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation. ‘Cupid’s Bow’ is like the young cruiser’s update on Adamski’s 1990 banger ‘Killer’, now with added wrestling boys in the video.

The glistening, thumping synths of Swedish pop-icon Robyn come to mind in ‘Archangel’ or ‘Miss You So Much’ and there are many sprinkles of the sugary, catchy-pop appeal of Kylie Minogue too. Alexander gained more fans after they watched his beautifully impish, vulnerable portrayal of aspiring actor Ritchie Tozer in Channel 4’s It’s A Sin and that sexual confidence and wink-wink humour still beams out of Polari, where the entendres are doubling. Prepare to blush at the meaningful pause in ‘Make Me A Man’, where he sings ‘won’t you fill this hole... in my heart.’ 

Not all Alexander’s fans will be following him with this album, however. His refusal to boycott 2024 Eurovision lost him huge chunks of his Queer fanbase; he represented the UK with Pet Shop Boys-echoing track ‘Dizzy’ but scored zero points in the public vote, possibly due to his limp stance on Israel’s participation in that contest. His careerism may be a turn off, but if a pop distillation of Queer desire is what you seek, Olly Alexander’s arrow doesn’t miss.

Polari is released by Polydor on Friday 7 February.