Interview with Rex Orange County about ‘The Alexander Technique’

“My first few albums all led up to this in my mind,” says the English artist known as Rex Orange County, speaking of his intimate yet musically fierce upcoming album. “This is exactly what I’ve always wanted to make.”

Aptly titled The Alexander Techniquedue out September 6 on RCA, the album does indeed feel like a defining work. Rex (born Alexander O’Connor) began the project in 2020, around the same time he was making his third album, Who cares??, on which he collaborated almost exclusively with the Dutch musician and songwriter Benny Sings.

For AlexanderThe 26-year-old artist took a very different approach. Enlisting his “two best friends,” Jim Reed and Teo Halm, Rex welcomed more collaborators than ever before — most notably musicians including bassist Pino Palladino, keyboardists Cory Henry, Finn Carter and Reuben James, and pedal steel guitarist Henry Webb-Jenkins. “Especially those first few albums I thought, ‘Please don’t touch this, I know how it’s supposed to be,’ says Rex. ‘This was the first time I had ideas from different people flying around – and a lot more songs.’

Eventually he realized that Who cares? not only had to be released first, but that The Alexander Technique deserved a lot more time, saying it was “more ambitious as a whole.” As a result, the artist has come up with his longest album yet, with a tracklist of 16 songs instead of his usual 10. “I’ve never done that before,” he says of the “intense” experience – describing what sounds like a profound emotional purge. “That’s why it’s the technology.”

“I had this weird feeling for the first three years of my career, where every song that came out was every song I’d ever written,” he continues. “I had no reason to make one that wouldn’t (make it). I thought it would just confuse me. Which, I admit, it did. But (this album) has evolved so much in such a long time. The deeper you dig, the more you find.”

Since the release of his critically acclaimed debut album, Apricot Princess, in 2017 – which established Rex Orange County as a brutally honest songwriter and accomplished musician – his formulaic approach to album making has worked well. His 2019 project Pony debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and placed him at the forefront of a generation that combined indie-alternative pop with raw music.

And while Who cares? (which debuted at No. 5 on the chart) took bigger pop swings to support its more positive lyrics, Rex assures The Alexander Technique is where his more emotional writings from that period landed. (In the fall of 2022, the artist pleaded not guilty to six counts of sexual assault; all charges were dropped in December.) “It felt like this album was maybe more of a diary entry — where I got into it and the level of emotional depth,” he says.

Elsewhere, there’s a personal favorite, “Guitar Song,” the first song he made with Reed and Halm. (“The way it sounds is pretty much how it sounded the day we made it in 2021 — it’s free and the ending is mental,” he says). He calls “Look Me In the Eyes,” a collaboration with James Blake, “the most heartbreaking song I’ve ever heard.” And on the standout “Therapy,” he talks about entering the industry at 17 and therapy at 22 — “and no, I don’t regret a thing,” he sings. “I rose, I fell, and then I found peace.”

Despite the long running time of just over 50 minutes, Alexander is a masterclass in brevity, with the opening track “Alexander” – the first song Rex wrote for the album – as the most perfect example. The nearly five-minute track features Rex speaking-singing over the piano, as if he’s filling the time between songs in an intimate, dimly lit jazz bar. (Stevie Wonder is a favorite of his.)

“It was written pretty quickly, and that doesn’t always happen for me,” he says of the song, which tells the true story of a frustrating visit to the doctor in 2019, where he complained of persistent back pain, but was told it was more likely stress and anger and a troubled mind that were causing him pain. “In a weird way I feel like maybe he was right/I might be using my back pain to distract from the pain of life/I feel it all externally, when it’s really just inside,” Rex sings.

“I don’t want a whole album of five-minute stories of me talking on the piano, but I do want each song to feel concise and thoughtful,” he says. “So I set myself up for quite a task.”

Ultimately, “Alexander” helped set the tone for the entire album, down to its ambiguous title. While there is an Alexander Technique — known to help with inner balance, both mentally and physically, as the practice focuses on posture — Rex says that writing this album ultimately made him stronger. “Even though I still have terrible posture, it was honestly mostly just that — that’s my real Alexander Technique,” ​​he says. “I’m myself instead of Rex Orange County.”

He plans to carry that shift into his upcoming tour, calling it (like the album) his most ambitious show yet. He’s been rehearsing since June and says that “2008” — a thumping, upbeat number with halting falsetto harmonies — is especially fun to play live, while “New Years” has come most naturally. He’s also teased plans to switch things up at every show — and while that could mean anything from a different setlist to a surprise Taylor Swift-style number, he’s keeping most of the details private for now.

The tour will hit select theaters in cities including Chicago, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and London for mini-residencies—likely one-offs for this album, he says—making for a more involved set that will be “very connected to one of the visual locations” seen in his music videos. “The stage is connected to where I want to transport you as a listener,” he says. “(To) a more relaxed state.”

Considering the extent to which it is an artistic statement The Alexander Technique is, Rex admits that it feels like an ending of sorts, “weirdly enough.” “You have a different perspective,” he says of his mid-20s and his nearly decade-long stint in the industry. “It’s not the end of the 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 it. That’s the most important thing for me.”

Seemingly in first place, however, is his new tendency to put himself first. As he sings, succinctly as ever, on “Therapy”: “I recharged – and returned.”