Taken from the latest Alex Rex album, The National Trust, watch Boss Morris, a tribute to Alex’s favourite all-female Morris dancing side, the titular Boss Morris – energy, colour, self-invention and profound knowledge of the tradition all collapsed into something that has reinvigorated the form.
As Thomas Blake wrote in his album review of The National Trust – On Boss Morris, Foucault and football, Francis Bacon and pornography manage to worm their way into a song that is ostensibly a celebration of tradition and the many glorious ways it can be moulded into new and thrilling art.
The pollution of British folk with something stranger and more sensual has long been a preoccupation of Alex Neilson’s and has streaked through his work from Trembling Bells to Shirley Collins. The video was revealed last night, in time for May Day.
Featuring Alex Rex, Dylan Read…and the colourful Boss Morris of course.
It’s that paradox that keeps Neilson going, that keeps his music vital and apparently haunts his life. It’s a concoction that shows no sign of losing its power, so if this does prove to be the final chapter in the twisted Sadean story of Alex Rex, we can only hope that he finds another outlet sooner rather than later. After all, these songs may revel in bitterness and humiliation, but they are real and unflinching and fearsomely clever and often beautiful. Neilson remains an absolute one-off, whatever he thinks of his own talents.
Thomas Blake, Klof Mag
The National Trust (March 28th, 2025) The Barne Society (TBS15LP)
Order ‘The National Trust’: https://thebarnesociety.greedbag.com/
