After releasing latest album Pony in October, Rex Orange County tours the UK and Ireland for a run of dates including Manchester’s O2 Apollo.
Pony includes Rex Orange County’s latest single 10/10, a track which has received huge critical acclaim and scored millions of views and listens since its release.
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The album marks the follow up to 2017’s Apricot Princess and was written, recorded and performed almost entirely by Rex Orange County himself. Pony was recorded at Strongroom Studios in London alongside frequent collaborator Ben Baptie who co-produced, engineered and mixed the album.
Pony witnesses Rex Orange County spending the first half of the album reflecting on the troubles he faced over the previous years, then looking at how he turned things around. He explains, “The first half to me is the angry, reflective thing. And the second half is: now I’ve gotten over it.”
“I was feeling quite suppressed in my work” he adds, “I really did have a bad year.” He alludes to recently released single 10/10, “That song is purely autobiographical and it is definitely true. I don’t want to go into the details, but I’d been in a tunnel that was very dark. Then, writing that song, the lyrics came quickly, and I came out of the tunnel – and I finally felt I could look at the future in a positive way. It’s definitely not a love song, or even an anti-love song. It’s just anti-anyone who’s ever tried to bring you down and put you in a bad place.”
Rex Orange County wants to live his musical life. To be free to take his emotional show on the road, and see audiences be spurred to smiles, but also moved to tears. It’ll be real, it’ll be true, it’ll be a rollercoaster. “I just love to play live with my band,” he concludes. “It’s just the most rewarding part. And now I’m way happier than I was before, I want to let people hear that in the songs – but also hear what it took to get here. That’s all.”
When does Rex Orange County headline at Manchester’s O2 Apollo?
Rex Orange County headlines at Manchester’s O2 Apollo on 17 November 2019. The Manchester gig is one of six UK and Ireland dates he is playing:
13 November – Birmingham, O2 Academy
17 November – Manchester, O2 Apollo
20 November – Dublin, Olympia Theatre
24 November – Glasgow, Barrowland Ballroom
26 November – London, O2 Brixton Academy
27 November – London, O2 Brixton Academy
