Now a decade in, remains one of music’s most poetic sentimentalists. The Grayshott singer-songwriter has always epitomised remarkable maturity with ‘Bcos U Will Never B Free’ and ‘’ unfolding jazzy chamber pop to intro sunrise standards that tap a comforting kind of reverie, making his creativity immediately identifiable. 2019’s ‘’ was his ‘Salad Days’, assessing his faults through 35mm slides and Boys Don’t Cry strings, while 2022’s ‘WHO CARES?’ laced his bedroom soul with Romantic-era flourishes. His latest album, ‘’, doesn’t rework his bliss-outs but it’s a transmission elevated by collaborative solitude.
Alex O’Connor is still very much an introvert as his heart has never been able to find a seat next to his neuroses, but a few sessions in Jamaica with Daniel Caesar and Mustafa The Poet led to creative assuredness. Next to ‘’, his melodies are sharper — exuding tones, desires, and layers of gossamer guitar that melt into the idea of a protagonist who wears different personas to win over a girl who is always on his mind. That intimate simplicity might not be a foreign concept but it swaps lenses to ensure his words are scraped hollow, even if efforts like ‘’ briefly use them as an aesthetic. “Played every role you asked of me,” he admits, letting Uptown harmonies and hi-hat crashes collide midair to bury any avoidant tendencies that lingered for too long: “And all I asked was for you to take the role of someone who loves me.”
The softer sound of ‘Dream Fatigue’ is emotionally charming as it clears space for introspection in the key of ‘All Things Must Pass’ and ‘Crying Laughing Loving Living’ to describe more liminal moments. ‘’ is a song about a frayed connection who found a means to move on but isn’t dancing anymore as their “feet stayed on the floor”; it acts as an anchor for the record with vocals from South London’s dexter in the newsagent and like ‘’, it articulates the push-and-pull of watching someone close to your heart taper off into a memory: “I’ll learn a new chord to go through a new door / But there’s nothing I can play to just make you hear me out”.
Similarly, ‘’ strums along as colours fade, being honest and diffident at the same time, while ‘’ and ‘’ play into those fictional personas with piano, violins, and woodwind devices circling each bluesy admission. It’s no ‘Guitar Song’, but ‘’ grooves into ‘80s R&B ballad territory with Jockstrap’s Taylor Skye, Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, and Blood Orange’s Devonté Hynes turning a ‘Blonde’-lite mix into a blossoming swell of syncopated soul that illustrates how love can impair someone who is “still in progress”. The trio aid Rex’s lissome guitar work on ‘’ with Yates even adding his sentiments to having a heart that “might be the wrong size for this body” while O’Connor digs into a weight he can’t break free from. “I’m not so calm I shake my legs like I’m Elvis / I wanna be your only friend cause I’m selfish” he concedes while his true feelings keep spilling out: “There’s no one else I wanna face a new hell with”.
‘’ and ‘’ offer their own acute perspectives but no song better cements Rex’s songwriting than the title track. ‘’ bookends the project’s vulnerable edges with a slow strummer that spirals into an arrangement that’s at odds with itself. It’s fractured but still, droning but serene, and just when it seems like it’s going to fade into an ecstatic dispatch of lo-fi minimalism, it blurs the space between bedroom-pop intimacy and orchestral dissonance as Rex achingly notes ‘I’m tired of dreaming’. It’s an ambitious portrait of a heart at odds with itself and while he assures he’s ‘in a happy, settled place’ now, it’s difficult to believe him. Or at least, not wonder what it took for an artist to find solace in knowing there’s realities you can’t control.
8/10