Alex Neilson has announced that his new album, The National Trust, will be the final studio album to be released as Alex Rex. His Alex Rex project began in 2017 with Vermillion, followed by Otterburn (2019) with its songs “Hacked out of the rock of grief and raw emotion.” Andromeda (2020) followed and, like its predecessor, was “a difficult, brilliant, rewarding snapshot of human turmoil.” In 2021, we arrived at Paradise, which led Thomas Blake to note that Alex Rex’s aphoristic approach to songwriting means that every line he writes sounds like a defining statement, but on Paradise, those statements come together (albeit in a ragged and even contradictory way) to form perhaps his most rewarding piece of work to date. The same year, we were treated to a live album, Memory, Speak, and the last album, Mouthful Of Earth, was released in 2022–the first spoken-word Alex Rex album.
To create an album that works both as a collection of poetry and a musical offering must be doubly difficult, but with Mouthful Of Earth, Neilson has pulled it off with endless originality and lusty lyricism.
Thomas Blake, KLOF Mag
The new album, The National Trust, was written in the wake of the sudden death of Neilson’s younger brother, Alastair; the album is a poignant reflection on loss, love, and renewal, deeply rooted in the landscape of Carbeth—a cabin community in the Scottish countryside that Alastair called home. For Neilson, the cabin became a physical and emotional project, symbolising restoration and reconnection.
Neilson shared:
“For the first four years after Alastair died, his cabin lay empty and exposed to the remorseless Scottish weather. It came to look like a rotten tooth in a beautiful mouth. Cladding was dropping off its veneer, the ashen baubles of dead wasps’ nests clung to the rafters, all his possessions were just as he’d left them but eaten by mice, moths and time. Ashtrays still carried the crushed centimetres of his old tab ends. The cabins are so joyfully animated by their host’s specific personality and this one looked like a haunted house. Guilt, unrealised hopes and encroaching nature yoked together in a wandering sadness. Combined with the fact that I didn’t know the right way round to hold a hammer made the project of its restoration seem hopeless.”
The album press reveals that Neilson, however, gradually began chipping away at the task, determined to transform the cabin into something he hoped would resemble “a National Trust site occupied by a psychopath,” with a little help from some friends, including Lavinia Blackwall and Marco Rea.
“They poured love into the cabin and helped restore Alastair’s original vision. The project also helped restore my relationship with Lavinia, which had fractured after Trembling Bells broke up in 2017. Alongside long-term Rex lieutenant Rory Haye, we applied the same intensity of dedication that we did in renovating the cabin, into creating The National Trust.”
Those above quotes will move anyone who has followed Neilson’s journey, and this does feel like the perfect time to close the Alex Rex chapter. For this finale, he is joined by longtime collaborators Lavinia Blackwall, Marco Rea, and Rory Haye return, alongside guest musicians like Jill O’Sullivan (Jill Lorean) and Trembling Bells guitarist Mike Hastings.
The results are described as a profoundly personal and multifaceted work, blending acid wit with haunting introspection. As it always is.
We’ve already shared one track from the album, Psychic Rome, but this is always worth resharing.
The National Trust will be released on March 28th via The Barne Society.