Rex Orange County - Pony (2019)

To listen to Rex Orange County is to feel like you know him. “I had a year that nearly sent me off the edge,” he half-croons on “10/10,” the opening track on Pony, his third full-length album. “I feel like a five, I can’t pretend/But if I get my s**t together, this year maybe I’ll be a ten.” It’s the sort of thing you say aloud to yourself when you’re alone, if not the stuff of a billion filterless Instagrams. But Pony—written and recorded entirely by the 21-year-old singer-songwriter, with help from producer Ben Baptie—is pop of and for our very share-y times, a set of casual, Frank Ocean-indebted bedroom soul that’s often stunning in its clarity. “I’m still a boy inside my thoughts,” he sings on “Pluto Projector,” stretching his syllables like chewing gum. “Am I meant to understand my faults?”