Rock
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“My first few albums were all leading up to this in my mind,” says the English artist known as Rex Orange County, speaking of his intimate yet musically fierce forthcoming album. “This is exactly what I’ve always wanted to make.”
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Aptly titled The Alexander Technique, out Sept. 6 on RCA, the album does indeed feel like a defining work. Rex (born Alexander O’Connor) started the project back in 2020, around the same time he was crafting his third album, Who Cares?, on which he worked almost exclusively with Dutch musician and songwriter Benny Sings.
For Alexander, the 26-year-old artist took an entirely different approach. Enlisting his “two best friends,” Jim Reed and Teo Halm, Rex welcomed more collaborators than ever before – particularly musicians, including bass player Pino Palladino, keys players Cory Henry, Finn Carter and Reuben James and pedal steel guitarist Henry Webb-Jenkins. “Particularly those first couple albums I was very like, ‘Please don’t touch this, I know how it should be,’” says Rex. “This was the first time that I had different people’s ideas flying around – and way more songs.”
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Eventually, he realized that Who Cares not only had to be released first, but that The Alexander Technique deserved much more time, saying it “was more ambitious as a whole.” As a result, the artist has emerged with his longest album yet, boasting a tracklist of 16 songs compared to his usual 10. “I never did that before,” he says of the “intense” experience – describing what sounds like a thorough emotional purge. “That’s why it’s the technique.”
“I had this weird thing for the first three years of my career where every song that came out was every song I’d ever written,” he continues. “I had no reason to create one that wasn’t gonna [make it]. I thought it would just confuse me. Which, I’ll admit, it does. But [this album] has evolved so much over such a long time. The deeper you dig, the more you find.”
Since the release of his critically acclaimed debut album, Apricot Princess, in 2017 – which established Rex Orange County as a brutally honest songwriter and well-versed musician – his formulaic approach to album building has worked just fine. His 2019 project Pony debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and placed him at the forefront of a generation that blended indie alternative-pop with raw writing.
And while Who Cares? (which debuted at No. 5 on the tally) took bigger pop swings to support its more positive lyricism, Rex assures that The Alexander Technique is where his more emotional writing from that period of time ended up. (In the fall of 2022, the artist pleaded not guilty to six charges of sexual assault; by that December, all charges were dropped.) “It felt like this album was maybe more of a diary entry – what I was getting into and the level of emotional depth,” he says.
Elsewhere, there’s a personal favorite, “Guitar Song,” which was the first track he made with Reed and Halm. (“The way it sounds is pretty much the way it sounded on the day we made it in 2021 – it’s free and the ending is mental,” he says). He calls “Look Me In the Eyes,” on which he collaborated with James Blake, “the most heartbreaking song I’ve ever heard.” And on standout “Therapy,” he speaks of entering the industry at 17 and therapy at 22 – “and no, I don’t regret a thing,” he sings. “I came up, I fell down, and then I found peace.”
Despite the lengthy runtime, clocking in at just over 50 minutes, Alexander is a masterclass in being succinct, with its opening song “Alexander” – the first song Rex wrote for this album – as the most perfect example. On the near-five-minute song, Rex speak-sings over the piano, as if filling time in between songs at an intimate, dim-lit jazz bar. (Stevie Wonder is a favorite of his.)
“It was written quite quickly, and that doesn’t always happen for me,” he says of the song, in which he recounts the true story of a frustrating visit to the doctor’s office in 2019. While there, he complained of ongoing back pain, only to be told it was more likely stress and anger and an unsettled mind that was causing him to hurt. “In a weird way, I feel like maybe he was right/I may be using my back pain to distract from the pain of life/Feel it all externally when really it’s just inside,” sings Rex.
“I don’t want a whole album of five-minute stories of me talking over piano, but I do want every song to feel this concise and thoughtful,” he says. “So I was setting myself up for quite a task.”
Ultimately, “Alexander” helped set the tone of the entire album, down to its double entendre of a title. While there is an Alexander Technique – known to help with inner balance, both mentally and physically as a focus of the practice is posture – Rex says that writing this album was what ultimately made him stronger in the end. “As much as I really do still have terrible posture, it was more so being honest – that’s my actual Alexander Technique,” he says. “Me being myself rather than Rex Orange County.”
He plans to translate that shift to his upcoming tour, calling it (much like the album) his most ambitious show to date. He’s been rehearsing since June, sharing that “2008” – a thumping upbeat song with glitchy falsetto harmonies – has been especially fun to play live, while “New Years” has come the most naturally. He also teases plans to switch it up at each show – and while that could mean anything from a different set list to a surprise song à la Taylor Swift, he keeps most details private for now.
The trek will hit select theaters in cities including Chicago, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and London for mini residencies – likely a one-off for this album, he says – allowing for a more involved set that will be “highly linked to one of the visual locations” seen in his music videos. “The stage is linked with where I’ve been wanting to transport you as a listener,” he says. “[To a] more relaxing state,”
Considering how much of an artistic statement The Alexander Technique is, Rex admits it does “weirdly” feel like some sort of end. “You have a different perspective,” he says of being in his mid-20s and having worked in the industry for a near-decade. “It’s not the end of the era, but I definitely feel a different level of awareness and maturity, maybe,” he says. “I still love music and I want to keep making music – and I want to keep changing it up. That’s the most important thing to me.”
Seemingly tied for first place, however, is his newfound penchant for prioritizing himself. As he sings, succinctly as ever, on “Therapy”: “I recharged – and returned.”
Queen guitarist Brian May has revealed that he recently suffered a minor stroke that resulted in damage to his left arm. The 77-year-old rock icon described a “health hiccup” last week that made him temporarily unable to control the hand he uses to pick out chords on his guitar, even as he assured his fans […]
Knocked Loose frontman Bryan Garris is an ordinary-looking dude who screams all his lyrics. “I just can’t sing,” Garris tells me matter-of-factly. “I wish all the time that I could, but I probably wouldn’t utilize it for Knocked Loose. We just want to be an intense band. There’s never, ever been a conversation of softening.”
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Even without toning down the mayhem, Garris and co. have scored one of 2024’s most commercially successful new rock albums from one of the genre’s most traditionally un-commercial corners. Knocked Loose play pummeling, metallic hardcore—the kind of stuff that’s forged in basements and DIY venues, fine-tuned for moshing and fan connection.
You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To is 28 minutes of pure carnage, free from any commercial concessions. After dropping on May 10 through Pure Noise Records, the band’s third studio album debuted at No. 1 on three Billboard charts: Independent Albums, Hard Rock Albums and Indie Store Album Sales. The album earned nearly 24,000 units (including an impressive 18,000 in pure sales) in its first week, good for a No. 23 debut on the Billboard 200 dated May 25. Some context: it debuted ahead of a new studio album from Kings of Leon, a major label band with significantly more industry clout. (And among fast-rising newcomers, Knocked Loose came in five spots above Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess during that particular chart week.)
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“People were excited to buy this record,” says James Vitalo, Knocked Loose’s manager for Gold Theory Artists. “They carry themselves so well and are so intentional with everything they do. People want to see them win.”
Historically, heavy rock bands tend to forge commercial inroads by making their sound more palatable: think Metallica serving ballads on The Black Album, or Bring Me the Horizon ditching their MySpace deathcore roots and singing big, shiny choruses on 2013’s Sempiternal. Instead, Knocked Loose dug their heels into the sound that made them.
The five-piece (which also includes guitarists Isaac Hale and Nicko Calderon, bassist Kevin Otten, and drummer Kevin “Pacsun” Kaine) formed in 2013 in Louisville, Kentucky. “We were thrown into the deep end of DIY touring,” Garris recalls of the early days. “You’re trapped in a basement, either fighting or getting beat up. Louisville was never very violent. Then [we were] going to bigger cities, seeing how hard people mosh.”
Knocked Loose became one of the hottest names in hardcore thanks to their 2014 EP, Pop Culture. They signed to Pure Noise Records, a young indie label best known for breaking pop-punk bands like State Champs and The Story So Far. The pairing was an immediate win for both sides: Pure Noise boosted its cred with a buzzy band outside its typical purview, and Knocked Loose got a label with strong independent distribution (the Orchard distributed You Won’t Go).
Their 2016 debut album Laugh Tracks solidified their national following, particularly with the minute-long tune “Counting Worms.” Its earthquaking breakdown — punctuated by Garris barking, “ARF ARF” — was memed across the alt-kid internet, and gave Knocked Loose an early signature song. Three years later, they’d built such a strong following that 2019 sophomore album A Different Shade of Blue debuted at No. 26 on the Billboard 200, more than 100 spots higher than Laugh Tracks, which started at No. 163 in 2016.
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As Knocked Loose planned its third LP, 2023 brought them an unexpected invite: Coachella. “We immediately said yes,” says Garris. Then the anxious waiting set in: “What’s this going to be? It could be bad, and that would be fine. It’s Coachella. It’s not our normal stage.”
April 16, as their 8:10 p.m. set time approached, the setting looked surprisingly… familiar. “We pull up, go to our stage, and there’s no barricade. This has to be a mistake, they’re probably still setting up. Then our stage manager comes over, he’s wearing a punk shirt, and immediately introduces himself: ‘We’re really excited to have you guys, we know what you’re about, blah, blah, blah.’ I was like, ‘Are you keeping the barricade down?’ He says yeah. I’m thinking, This is insane.”
It was. Seriously, watch this. This was at Coachella:
New eyeballs were on Garris. “Someone said Tom DeLonge [was sidestage], someone said Ethel Cain, which was a big one for me, personally. Then the video came out of Billie Eilish watching us play. I was just like, This doesn’t feel real.”
As Knocked Loose garnered new fans (including some famous ones), Vitalo sensed new interest in Knocked Loose’s scene from various factions of the music industry. “I’ve been working with metal and hardcore bands for 10 years, and over the last two, there’s been a lot of people coming into a space that’s been neglected,” he says. “A lot of record labels, booking agents, and managers are paying attention to something they haven’t paid attention to before. I’m not saying it’s a good or a bad thing, but it’s noticeable. Not letting that go to their heads proves Knocked Loose’s character.”
Knocked Loose capitalized on the Coachella momentum. Three weeks later, they unleashed Upon Loss Singles, a two-song collection featuring their first work with Grammy-nominated producer Drew Fulk (Lil Peep, A Day to Remember). This new strain of Knocked Loose — widescreen and hi-fi, while somehow even more brutal—would become fully realized on You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To. Take the ominous little coda of “Moss Covers All” that segues seamlessly into the beatdown opening of “Take Me Home,” or the guest appearance from goth-pop artist Poppy, who screams with Garris while Kaine drums a reggaeton rhythm on “Suffocate.” The lattermost track hit the top 10 on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart in May alongside the album drop, and became Knocked Loose’s first entry on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, reaching No. 46 in May.
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Knocked Loose christened the new album at L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium in May with over 6,000 fans, their largest headlining show yet. Bands that get bigger by getting heavier are rare – but starting in August, Knocked Loose began touring with one of them.
“Knocked Loose slams so hard, they’re gonna have bone problems later in life,” says Slipknot percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan, recounting a conversation from the previous night’s gig. “When people say these things out loud, you know they’re doing it.”
Strong words, coming from the guy who’s been slamming kegs and custom drum kits with metal bats in a clown mask for the past three decades. Slipknot is touring behind the 25th anniversary of its self-titled 1999 debut, and Knocked Loose was hand-picked to open the entire trek. “A tour of this scale comes with its own new set of benefits for a band like us,” Garris says. “This is all uncharted territory.”
On Aug. 12, the tour came to New York’s Madison Square Garden. The place was sold out, and this was clearly the headliner’s crowd: parents rocking decades-old Slipknot gear, kids in youth-size tees and replica coveralls. Still, the seats were nearly full in time for Knocked Loose’s opening set, and as Knocked Loose raged, the crowd responded. Fans in the nosebleeds looked up from their nachos. The mosh pit didn’t get as big as it would for Slipknot, but it was livelier.
“You see people who get there early and go straight to the barricade, saving their spot for Slipknot,” Garris tells me. “At the start of our set, they couldn’t care less. Slowly but surely, they start to bob their head, put their hands up. Watching that firsthand is super rewarding.”
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Knocked Loose has a way of winning over the unconverted. Maybe it’s in Garris’ voice. The stereotypical hardcore frontman is some big dude with a deep, guttural scream who sounds like he’s looking for an excuse to beat you up. When Garris screams, he’s high-pitched and a bit unhinged. He sounds like he’s been through some real s–t, not simply here to play the punisher.
“I just got done telling Bryan and those guys about understanding that you’re in the zone,” Clown says. “You need a good team. A family around you, checking for isolation, substance abuse, depression, ego. You can’t just go rock out. Sharon Osborne checked in on me. I had Deftones bass player Chi [Cheng], who’s passed. He would check on me, because we were both family men. I’m checking in on [Knocked Loose] because I understand the realities.”
Music this physical is not easy to play night after night. The rigors of the road affect any popular artist, but Knocked Loose are regularly at risk of hockey-style injuries– and the kind of maladies you can’t see. “I’m definitely not a teenager anymore,” says Garris, who will turn 31 on Sept. 6. “I’m listening to myself and taking care of myself. I can’t do this if I’m not mentally healthy.”
There’s a lot more ahead. After the Slipknot tour wraps Sept. 21, Knocked Loose will embark on a 22-date U.S. headlining tour Oct. 4. It’s a mix of large theaters, amphitheaters, and even arenas. There will be several chances to break that attendance record they set four months ago.
Knocked Loose’s success feels intensely singular, nearly impossible to duplicate. They’ve been fighting the good fight for over a decade, a top-tier band in a genre known for loyal, highly-engaged fans. Many probably see a bit of themselves in Garris. The band’s support team is well-connected. Can Knocked Loose get even bigger?
If another legendary metal band takes them on tour, that wouldn’t hurt. The Grammys have nominated fresh blood like Turnstile, Code Orange, and Deafheaven in the best metal performance category in recent years, if that’s an item Knocked Loose is looking to cross off their list. But really, the core to all this is pushing the envelope with each release, then going out and slaying shows. It’s not that complicated.
“Every time we headline,” muses Garris, “it’s like, Where can we take it now? What’s the next step?”
Next Summer’s Lollapalooza Chile, Lollapalooza Argentina and Lollapalooza Brasil will feature headlining sets from Justin Timberlake, Olivia Rodrigo and Shawn Mendes. The festivals announced the full lineups for their 2025 editions, which will also all include headliners Alanis Morissette, Tool and Rüfüs Du Sol.
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Lollapalooza Chile will set up from March 21-23 at Parque Bicentenario de Cerrillos and also feature sets from Benson Boone, Foster the People, Tate McRae, Zedd, Charlotte De Witte, Parcels, Rawayana, Teddy Swims, James Hype, Los Tres, Mon Laferte, Fontaines D.C., Girl in Red, Inhaler, Sepultura and more; ticket information is here.
Lolla Argentina will take place on the same weekend in the Hippodromo de San Isidro in Buenos Aires with a similar lineup that will also include sets from Tan Bionica, Wos, La K’onga, Los Angeles Azules, Nathy Peluso, Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, Caribou, Jpegmafia, San Holo and more; ticket information can be found here.
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Lolla Brazil will hit stages from March 28-30 in the Autódromo de Interlagos in São Paulo also with a similar lineup including Wave to Earth, Michael Kiwanuka, Barry Can’t Swim, Neil Frances, Zerb, Disco Lines, Kasablanca, Artemas, Nessa Barrett, DJ GBR, Ashibah, Marina Lima and many more; click here for ticket information.
The shows will represent the debut South American performances by Olivia Rodrigo and veteran hard rockers Tool and Timberlake’s first shows in Chile and Argentina. JT is in the midst of his Forget Tomorrow World Tour, which is kicking off a European leg on Wednesday (Sept. 4) before returning to North America in October and staying on the road across the country through a Dec. 20 gig at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, MO. Rodrigo wrapped her GUTS world tour on August 21 with the second of two shows at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, CA. Mendes will play Rock in Rio in September followed by a series of U.S. theater shows in October.
Check out the full lineups for all three festivals below.
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In August 2022, Allison Crutchfield, an A&R executive at ANTI- Records, traveled to Asheville, N.C., on a mission to sign the rising singer-songwriter known as MJ Lenderman. By year’s end, Crutchfield succeeded — and had also joined his tight-knit circle of friends.
“I’ve never had a meeting with an artist where they’ve been like, ‘Just come over and we’ll have a barbecue, we’ll just drink beer and eat,’ ” recalls Crutchfield, who got to know Lenderman at the property where he was living with several others, including members of the ascendant alt-country group Wednesday.
At the time, Lenderman had just released his breakthrough album, Boat Songs, a collection of detailed vignettes set to fuzzed-out country-rock riffs, on independent label Dear Life Records. And the 25-year-old hasn’t slowed down since: In late 2023, Lenderman made his ANTI- debut with his acclaimed live album Live and Loose!; in early 2024, he hit the road with Wednesday, for which he sings and plays guitar; and in March, Waxahatchee (fronted by Crutchfield’s twin sister, Katie) released her lauded album Tigers Blood, for which she invited Lenderman into her small creative circle. Lenderman made his Billboard chart debut, on Adult Alternative Airplay, with his feature on that set’s aching lead single, “Right Back to It,” and performed it alongside Waxahatchee on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
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As Lenderman’s profile grew, he was assembling Manning Fireworks, which is set for release Sept. 6 and his first studio album for ANTI-. “It was kind of strange,” he says when reflecting on the whirlwind that accompanied becoming one of indie rock’s most heralded new artists. “I guess it was more of an obstacle of making the new record — just trying to figure out how to not think about that and make a record like I would before.”
For Lenderman, that wasn’t so long ago. A child of music lovers — “My dad was a Deadhead,” he says, detailing the Derek Trucks and Gov’t Mule shows he saw as a kid growing up in Asheville — Lenderman began playing guitar in early grade school and eventually gravitated toward indie and punk music as a teenager playing in bands around his hometown. Soon he began recording, and the pandemic afforded him more time to complete 2021’s Ghost of Your Guitar Solo and, eventually, Boat Songs.
When Lenderman’s manager, Rusty Sutton, passed along a Boat Songs promo to Crutchfield, she knew she had to sign him “probably 10 seconds” into its opening song. “In a medium like indie rock,” she explains, “where there really is only so much you can do, for someone to do something where they’re honoring the tradition of this type of music but to do it in a way that does totally feel refreshing and like something that we haven’t heard, it’s really exciting.”
Lenderman is heavily influenced by Neil Young — “I can trace back most bands that I like to Neil,” he says, citing the rock legend’s scuzzy mid-’70s phase — and he also counts Drive-By Truckers, Dinosaur Jr. and Will Oldham as key touchstones. But his music has connected with younger audiences thanks to its modern sensibility and the way it careens from absurdist humor to deep, sometimes dark, profundity. (One new song, “Wristwatch,” is an ode to loneliness where the narrator notes that he’s “got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.”)
“Obviously, my real life is going to bleed through a little bit, but I try to keep it more from a third-person perspective,” he says. “I feel like that opens more possibilities — and it’s kind of more fun writing fiction.”
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For Manning Fireworks, recorded whenever he could find time between tours, Lenderman followed a familiar approach, reuniting with producer Alex Farrar at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios, where he has recorded tracks several times before. But the album, which expands Lenderman’s country-rock creative palette without losing its signature wit or intimacy, is far from a redux.
“I want my records to be dynamic,” Lenderman says. “For a while, I was trying to maybe take it up a notch and go louder or faster or something — and then that just really wasn’t where I was at. So I decided to go in the opposite direction and make it more acoustic and quieter.”
On Manning Fireworks, Lenderman does a bit of both. The music has never sounded richer, with fiddle and brass bolstering his guitar, but he also explores the flip side, like on album closer “Bark at the Sun,” which ends Manning Fireworks with a multiminute noise outro driven by “bass clarinet abuse drone.” While Lenderman “couldn’t tell you why” he made the creative choice — “it just felt right to me” — it’s indicative of his growth. “There’s a level of confidence coming from [him] at this point that feels different from Boat Songs,” Crutchfield says. “This is a person who is unbelievably talented and now understands how to wield that.”
Not that the eternally nonchalant Lenderman would ever describe his intuitive choices so grandly.
This story appears in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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