Alex O’Connor self-released bcos u will never b free, his first modest bedroom project as Rex Orange County, in 2015. It’s not hard to hear the appeal of that first tape: The songs were imperfect and angsty, with an amateur production style that fit Rex’s creaky nasal voice. “Pizza box/Wedding ring left amongst the crust,” he drawled, sketching a banal, absurd image of a crumbling relationship. “Don’t miss me when I’m dead,” he pleaded, and then followed up with an earnest rap verse about rejecting peer pressure.
His sound also appealed to Tyler, the Creator, who recruited the English singer and songwriter for his 2017 album Flower Boy. It became Rex’s breakout moment. After meeting Tyler, he rushed out another album, Apricot Princess, so that people who learned about him from Flower Boy would have something to listen to. This week, he released Pony, his first album for Sony and the third entry in Rex’s slim, sentimental catalog.
Rex’s distinctive voice has earned him the epithet “old soul,” but his newest music is relentlessly juvenile. When he landed a Spotify deal that offered the opportunity to work with an established artist on a cover song, he picked Randy Newman and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” On Pony, a collection of 10 new songs irritating enough to activate the mildest allergy to sincerity, he sings about being young and in love; about getting a little older but not yet old enough; about feeling like a comic-book superhero and getting “Stressed Out.” “When we have to speak I usually shoe gaze,” he admits on “Laser Lights,” with a delivery style equally indebted to Chance the Rapper’s singing and Ed Sheeran’s rapping.
Pony employs a more childlike musical palette than Rex’s earlier projects—bubbly synths, electric piano, programmed beats, bells, strings, and bird chirps—and though there’s still a waxy haze surrounding them, the intensity is dialed up. There’s always something jumping out of the mix to compete for attention—sometimes a pop of cartoonish horns, but more often Rex’s quavery voice, a limiting factor Pony tries every possible way to work around: chipmunk squeaks (“Stressed Out”), Vocoder (“Never Had the Balls”), digital barbershop quartet (“Face to Face”), distant-sounding piped-in vocals set to strings (“Pluto Projector”) or a disco beat (“It Gets Better”). The lyrics to “Never Had the Balls” feel extra crude because the setting is so immature; the treacly piano love song “Every Way” would be more believable from Mr. Rogers.
None of this straining supports an interesting idea. “Four years later/Look where we really are/Look how far we’ve come,” Rex sings on “It Gets Better,” over tinny, melodramatic electric strings. He’s not talking about graduating, or growing up in general—he’s talking about a girl who’s transformed his world in ways apparently not worth itemizing. You won’t find a wedding ring in a pizza box here. The album’s most salient detail is when Rex recalls a particular house where he once vomited.
Pony’s best line comes at the opening of “Pluto Projector,” a slow, Frank Ocean-esque ballad. “The great protector/Is that what I’m supposed to be?” Rex asks. “What if all this counts for nothin’/Everything I thought I’d be?/What if by the time I realize/It’s too far behind to see?” Toward the end, the song takes a weird turn: a pitched-down vocal coda that makes Rex sound like he’s drop-shipping counterfeit “Nikes.”
But Rex Orange County isn’t Frank Ocean; he stacks vast emotional weight on predictable, inoffensive songs until they buckle like wire shelving. Pony is simplistic, clueless, subtlety-free. “Didn’t understand until the age of 18/Even then I was blind,” he sings on “It Gets Better.” Over and over again, Rex sounds like he hasn’t begun to realize how much he doesn’t know.
