Interview with Rex Orange County on the “Alexander Technique”

“My first albums all led to this project in my head,” says the English artist known as Rex Orange County, of his upcoming album, which is both intimate and musically intense. “It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted to do.”

Well titled The Alexander TechniqueReleased September 6th on RCA, the album indeed feels like a defining work. Rex (born Alexander O’Connor) began the project in 2020, around the same time he was preparing his third album, Who cares??, on which he worked almost exclusively with Dutch musician and songwriter Benny Sings.

For AlexanderThe 26-year-old took a completely different approach. Enlisting his “two best friends,” Jim Reed and Teo Halm, Rex welcomed more collaborators than ever before – especially musicians, including bassist Pino Palladino, keyboardists Cory Henry, Finn Carter and Reuben James and pedal steel guitarist Henry Webb-Jenkins. ““Especially on the first two albums, I was like, ‘Don’t touch that, I know how it should be,’” Rex says. “That was the first time I had ideas from different people floating around – and a lot more songs.”

Finally he realized that Who cares? not only did he have to be released first, but that The Alexander Technique deserved much more time, saying it “was more ambitious overall.” As a result, the artist released his longest album to date, with a tracklist of 16 songs compared to the usual 10. “I’ve never done that before,” he says of the “intense” experience – describing what feels like a complete emotional purge. “That’s why it’s THE technical.”

“I had this weird tendency for the first three years of my career where every song that came out was every song I had ever written,” he continues. “I had no reason to make one that wasn’t going to be successful. I thought it would upset me. Which, I admit, it did. But this album has evolved so much over that long period of time. The deeper you dig, the more you find.”

Since the release of his critically acclaimed debut album, Princess Apricot, in 2017 – which established Rex Orange County as a brutally honest songwriter and seasoned musician – his formulaic approach to album making worked very well. His 2019 project Pony debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and placed him at the forefront of a generation that blended independent alternative pop with raw songwriting.

And while Who cares? (which debuted at No. 5 on the chart) has taken more pop-oriented turns to support its more positive lyricism, Rex assures The Alexander Technique It’s where his most emotional writing from that period ended up. (In the fall of 2022, the artist pleaded not guilty to six counts of sexual assault; in December of that year, all charges were dropped.) “I felt like this album was maybe more of a diary entry—what I was getting into and the level of emotional depth,” he says.

Elsewhere, there’s a favorite track, “Guitar Song,” which is the first song he wrote with Reed and Halm. (“The way it sounds is pretty much the same as the day we did it in 2021—it’s free and the ending is mental,” he says.) He calls “Look Me In the Eyes,” on which he collaborated with James Blake, “the most heartbreaking song I’ve ever heard.” And on “Therapy,” a standout, he talks about entering the industry at 17 and going to therapy at 22—“and no, I don’t regret anything,” he sings. “I got up, I fell down, and then I found peace.”

Despite the long running time, just over 50 minutes, Alexander is a masterclass in brevity, with its opening track “Alexander”—the first song Rex wrote for the album—as the perfect example. On the nearly five-minute song, Rex talks and sings at the piano, as if he were filling the time between songs in an intimate, dimly lit jazz bar. (Stevie Wonder is a favorite.)

“It was written pretty quickly, and that’s not always the case for me,” he says of the song, in which he tells the true story of a frustrating visit to the doctor in 2019. There, he complained of persistent back pain, only to be told it was stress, anger, and a disturbed mind that was hurting him. “In a weird way, I feel like maybe he was right / Maybe I’m using my back pain to distract myself from the pain of life / I feel it all on the outside when it’s really just on the inside,” Rex sings.

“I didn’t want a whole five-minute album of stories where I’m talking on the piano, but I wanted each song to be concise and thoughtful,” he says. “So I prepared myself for a difficult task.”

Ultimately, “Alexander” helped set the tone for the entire album, right down to the double entendre of its title. While there is an Alexander Technique—known for helping with inner balance, both mental and physical, because the practice’s focus is on posture—Rex says writing this album ultimately made him stronger. “Even though I still have terrible posture, it was more to be honest—it’s my true Alexander Technique,” ​​he says. “I’m me instead of Rex Orange County.”

He plans to carry that shift over to his upcoming tour, calling it (and the album) his most ambitious show yet. He’s been rehearsing since June, explaining that “2008”—a catchy, driving song with glitchy falsetto harmonies—has been particularly fun to play live, while “New Years” came naturally. He also hints at plans to switch up his style with each show—and while that could mean anything from a different setlist to a surprise Taylor Swift song, he’s keeping most of the details private for now.

The journey will take in select theaters in cities like Chicago, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, and London for mini-residencies — likely unique to this album, he says — allowing for a more involved set that will be “strongly tied to one of the visual locations” seen in his music videos. “The stage is tied to where I wanted to transport you as a listener,” he says. “(To a) more relaxed state,”

Considering what an artistic statement it is The Alexander Technique Rex admits it feels “weirdly” like an ending of sorts. “You have a different perspective,” he says of his twenties and working in the industry for nearly a decade. “It’s not the end of an era, but I definitely feel a different level of awareness and maturity, maybe,” he says. “I still love music and I want to keep making music – And I want to keep changing. That’s what matters most to me.

He seems tied for first place, though, because he recently discovered that he’s putting himself first. As he sings, succinctly as ever, on “Therapy”: “I recharged — and I came back.”