Album Review: Rex Orange County - 'WHO CARES?"
From motivations of self-love to infatuating and infuriating bouts of love, the new release ‘WHO CARES? From Rex Orange County has everything to fill your floaty indie needs.
Last Friday Rex Orange County released his new album ‘Who cares?’ and with it comes messages of the usual motivations for self-love, the acknowledgement of the issues in modern day relationships and gorgeous harmony to accompany these lovely little messages Rex often leaves in his work, this album has it all.
In this new album, Rex mixes his usual style of floaty and delicate indie-pop with the accompaniment of string sections and an orchestral to begin a few of his new tracks and it’s such a beautiful blend of styles, kind of hard to believe these two styles would melt together so well but it made for a very happy surprise to hear when beginning to listen through the album.
Interestingly, the title track of album is the very last track of the release. Sort of like leaving the best for last. The most important message of the album left for the very end. Maybe this is done for a point of reflection as I believe this song beautifully rounds of the album as it states, ‘who cares?’, you could have all these issues in life and all of these gorgeous and serene moments of love and self-worth but in reality, who does care? Except you!
The feature track ‘open a window” with Tyler the Creator, is the only feature on the album, which also seems surprising! Usually on an album, there will be a few collaborations or sometimes there won’t be any but having one hits the middle ground! The song is about the frustration of wanting escapism from life and the problems it brings but still, somehow, finding solace in your lover which is hinted with the lyrics “as soon as I see your face, I’ll be fine I’m sure” which is also repeated in the track. The song was released a few days before the album, leaving a very small space for building hype and anticipation for the album, however, with releasing ‘Amazing’, another track from the album, much earlier on in the release process, I feel the small gap didn’t hinder from the excitement for the album but instead added to it.
One of the tracks that I personally really enjoyed from this album was ‘One in a Million’. This track is much slower and not as upbeat in melody as some of the other tracks from this release. This song is about pure infatuation. Love in its highest and simplest form and i think it’s beautiful! The beat of the song kicks in after a few lines of the song and the lyricism “my heart keeps driving me crazy”, which is the opening line of the track and is repeated throughout the song, just adds to the pure sense of love that the track creates. In the middle of this track there is much more focus on the instrumental, which through-out the album is orchestral mixed with bouts of acoustic and electric guitar. With the usual rex style of reverb and echoey vocals and accompanied by heavenly harmonies to match this blend of absolutely gorgeous attributes, the song melts together perfectly.
So if you’d like your yearly fix of harmonious orchestral instrumental beauty with motivations of beginning to love yourself and a love for life all while acknowledging that there is, in-fact beauty in the pain of making mistakes in your life then this album is definitely the one for you to sink your teeth into! ‘Who Cares?” by Rex Orange County is available now on all major streaming platforms.
Words by Bethany Atkins
