Alex Rex is the name used by Alex Neilsen, former leader of the psych-folk outfit Trembling Bells, for his solo work. This album was written after Rex had been working on restoring a wooden cabin in Carbeth, a hamlet in the countryside north of Glasgow. The cabin had been left to decay after the sudden death of his younger brother, Alastair, who it belonged to. Former estranged Trembling Bells bandmate Lavinia Blackwall came to help with the restoration, which aided a reconciliation. Blackwall then worked on the album, in addition to Trembling Bells guitarist Mike Hastings and long-time collaborators Marco Rea and Rory Haye.
How much you will like the music on the album depends very much on personal taste. It is prog-folk with some seventies rock thrown in and is not unlike Trembling Bells’ work with Bonnie Prince Billy on their 2012 collaboration “The Marble Downs”. It has none of the groove or swing of most of the music here on AUK; rather, it has the angular, start-stop and orchestral feel of prog-rock at times.
The folk influence shows itself on the hymnal ‘Lelo Sona’, which has church organ and echoes of Steeleye Span’s ‘Gaudete’ and on ‘The Tradgedy of Man’ with its fiddle. The seventies rock appears in the looping glam-rock riff on ‘Psychic Rome’ and a couple of tracks remind you of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. The album was recorded, like Rex’s other works, in a few takes, with no rehearsals. This works well to give it a raw, unpolished, feel which makes you sit up and take notice. It’s a bit like The Fall playing prog rock and Rex’s words also echo Mark E Smith’s uncompromising approach.
As with the music, how much you like the words will be personal taste. They have a slightly unhinged dark humour, a bit like Alex Harvey. This is shown on the rousing and memorable title track with lines like “I got Lyrical Ballads coming out my arse” and “And John Ruskin was disgusted by his own wife’s pubic hair/Men of genius are fucking nightmares”. On ‘Boss Morris’ Rex goes a bit Frankie Howerd with “I like football and Foucault/ I like poetry and porn/ I like classical allusions/ Like when rosy fingered dawn”
But they also have a rather angry and bleak flavour with a downbeat view of humanity. Rex says that he is a ”pale misanthrope”, “the best bastard I know” and that “I treat my friends with disdain and my enemies like roses/I cut ‘em down”. But he seems to be in distress. Lines such as ”I’m too seasick to man the ship/I’m worn out from the inside out” and “I’ve got two kinds of song/ Which one will it be?/One where I hate myself/ Or one where you hate me?” show his turmoil.
And there are no words to sweeten the pill. Whereas, for example, Patterson Hood can write of the dark side of life but also of the love that makes it worthwhile, Rex seems rather jaundiced about love here with words such as “No, it’s not love/ it’s a mental disorder” and “I knew the value of nothing/I fell in love with nothing”. There is also no obvious mention of his brother except perhaps in the words “Get it through your thick head/ He’s not coming back from the dead”, although the sadness in the album may reflect his grief.
Rex writes about the renovation of the cabin: “while songwriting brings to life orphaned parts of my personality, the cabin is a synthesis of all my interests – nurturing my emotional health instead of exploiting it. With that in mind, I think this will be my last album as Alex Rex.”
The album will divide opinion but is a worthwhile and engaging work of art which demands your attention.
