On his fifth studio album, the English singer-songwriter invites listeners to join him on a journey that feels almost like a therapy session.
Rex Orange County has been a hit among the Gen Z set since the release of his 2017 album, Apricot Princess, and his star-making appearance on Tyler, the Creator’s fifth album Flower Boy.
The reasons for his popularity? The first is how the 26-year-old English singer-songwriter — whose music draws from jazz, R&B, and rap — is uniquely appealing in his ability to perform multiple instruments with ease.
Then there is his ear for sticky-sweet melodies and his knack for combining the intimacy of bedroom pop with the showmanship of jazz. His songs about love, loss, and life have been reassuring like a warm blanket or rejuvenating like a summer’s day out with friends, or both.
But most of all, it is his disaffected yet refreshingly sincere candour that has endeared him to the young crowd. Raw and honest, his songs often feel diaristic. It’s this vulnerability that makes Rex Orange County, whose real name is Alexander James O’Connor, so relatable.
His fifth and latest album, The Alexander Technique, is perhaps his most introspective one yet, and understandably so. It marks his first batch of music since his legal troubles in 2022, when he faced six charges of sexual assault. All charges were dropped by the end of that year, with Rex declaring after in an official statement that he was innocent and wrongly accused.
Rex tells Apple Music about the new album: “It’s the most honest, and it’s the most vulnerable, and it’s what I’ve wanted to make for the longest time.” It’s clear that such a tumultuous period in his life has forced Rex to re-evaluate his career and art.
Most of his music thus far has been open-hearted, and The Alexander Technique takes that vulnerability to radical new heights. Its album cover hints at this: its image is that of a vintage manila folder like those therapists would keep for a long-time patient. This album is about Rex, warts and all, as if baring everything before us.
He opens the album with “Alexander”, a piano ballad named after himself. It’s about his visit to the doctor, who waves off his complaints of a bad back and, instead, offers advice to “ease up on stress” and to face the “anger in you, plus addiction, plus the rest”. Rex is mad the doctor wouldn’t listen to him about his back woes but wonders if he had a point: “I may be using my back pain to distract from the pain of life / Feel it all externally, when really it’s just inside / Procrastinating confrontation every single time”.
The next two tracks, “Guitar Song” and “2008”, explore different points of his life: the former follows his vulnerable 16-year-old self aimlessly wandering around San Francisco, and the latter adopts the perspective of a carefree 10-year-old Rex in his home garden. One deals with loneliness through vices and the other through music.
The following track, “Therapy”, is where these experiences inform his present as he’s sitting across from his therapist with one goal: “All I really want is to feel a peace, to find my place”. Adopting a rap cadence similar to his peer Frank Ocean, Rex takes a stab at opening up about his life after the events of 2022. He forgoes the litigious details but reassures listeners what came out at the end. “I wouldn’t be here now if I failed / To take the time to care for myself / I never thought that things would get as bad as they were / I recharged and returned”, he raps over a soulful organ dirge.
But, as many would attest, therapy isn’t a one-stop solution to fix all your problems, and Rex acknowledges this in tracks about anxiety (“4 In The Morning”), insecurity (“Jealousy”), relationship woes (“Pure”), and loneliness (“Sliding Doors”). He oscillates between these naked feelings and moments of self-discovery and self-actualisation, like on “Much Too Much”, where he starts to find his authentic self. “Hang out for a minute / Now you put your favourite work on the wall / Went with what you like / No more time to hide”, he sings over a mechanised bossa nova beat, sounding as free as he’s ever been.
Speaking to Billboard, Rex confesses that The Alexander Technique is his first album on which many songs were made through collaborations, including ones with veteran jazz bassist Pino Palladino, former Snarky Puppy member Cory Henry, and fellow singer-songwriter James Blake, who appears on the heart-rending duet “Look Me In The Eyes”. Even as The Alexander Technique documents the life of a complicated 26-year-old, the message at the end is pure and simple: no one is an island, and life is made better when you aren’t facing it alone.
Rex Orange County's newest album, The Alexander Technique, released on September 6th, 2024.
View DetailsImages: Clare Shilland, © Flickr (Mac Downey/The Come Up Show)