When Alfie Templeman was halfway through making his full-length debut, he was hit by a revelation: More pop bangers were needed. Lockdown was lifting and you could see your friends again, make plans, and sniff the breeze—and it unlocked a sense of liberation in the singer-songwriter from Bedfordshire, England. “When I started out about two years ago, there was no pop at all [in my music],” Templeman, aged 19 at the time of release, tells Apple Music. “It was all quite R&B, quite indie and I just hit a point last summer where, all of a sudden, I was seeing places again and I felt like I had a lot more energy.”That feeling of emerging from the darkness and making sense of troubled times runs right through Mellow Moon, the follow-up to Templeman’s 2021 mini-album, Forever Isn’t Long Enough. It builds on the jubilant indie pop of that set, but the hooks are sharper, the sonics bolder, the euphoria more exhilarating. If Forever Isn’t Long Enough was like a giddy coming-of-age drama, here Templeman emerges as a young adult with a new sense of self. “I had a bit of a mental health thing last year, but it taught me a lot about myself,” he says. “As bad as depression is, it can teach you a lot of things, and you see a lot of things in black-and-white, as they are. The pandemic showed me who I was before, and who I am now.” Here, he takes us through Mellow Moon, track by track.