Orville Peck is a man of many contradictions.
The country musician has spoken at length about how his signature mask, which conceals half of his face and obscures the rest with leather fringe, is a representation of his truest self. He has been openly gay from the beginning of his career, a rarity in country music, but he is uninterested in branding himself as a “gay icon” — an approach he says is “probably for the best.” At a time when there is enormous pressure placed on queer art to act as positive PR for an embattled community, Peck’s music remains resolute in exploring the painful emotions that often characterize the queer experience, like abject loneliness, alienation, and wanting someone so much you could kill them.
Peck’s new album, Bronco, embodies these contradictions more acutely than any of his previous output. The standout track “The Curse of the Blackened Eye,” for example, explores the idea of being literally followed by a personification of trauma and abuse — played by a brooding Norman Reedus in the music video — all while Peck croons over an arrangement of slide guitars and bongos that wouldn’t be out of place in a ’60s tiki bar. “Lafayette” similarly sounds upbeat on first listen, drawing from the marabi music Peck grew up listening to in South Africa, but the lyrics tell a story of heartache over an ex-lover in New Orleans.
Even though Bronco plumbs the depths of some of Peck’s darkest moments in stark detail, the singer says he has never been more content with himself. Fresh off of a first-time Coachella set and in between shows for the Bronco tour, Peck spoke with Them about all of the details behind making his sophomore record, from the track order to the catharsis that the record provided.
What are some influences of yours that people might not necessarily assume of your work?
I always feel like my references are so obvious, but maybe they’re not to other people. I’m a big fan of cinema like John Waters and Gus Van Sant and Pedro Almodóvar and Jodorowsky. More along the abstract-ish line of film, or at least kind of the absurd, in John Waters' case. I’m pretty influenced by theater. I love classic plays; I’m a big fan of Shakespeare and Chekhov and Ibsen, really old playwrights. I just think there’s a beautiful poetry in a lot of the writing, and that definitely influences a lot of the way I’ve tried to form my lyrics and present feelings so they’re not just entirely straightforward.
Maybe there’s a little bit of play on words or some wit to them, hopefully.
You released Bronco in different groupings of songs that you’ve referred to as “chapters.” But in each individual chapter, the order of songs is different than they are in the final album. How did you ultimately decide the order of the tracklist?
I’m a big fan of classic albums, and the way that they used to be made and the way that you would listen to an album top to bottom in order. It was a whole journey. You have to listen to some of my favorite classic albums in order to get the full experience because it’s how they’re written and how they’re supposed to be presented. With Bronco, the tracklisting was important because I wanted it to feel like a cohesive album and I wanted people to go on the journey of what the different songs were saying, and the way they felt.
Sometimes there’s a really sharp turn to throw people off: going from a really fast-paced song to a super stripped-down song. It’s funny, I’ve seen people saying that going from “Any Turn” to “City of Gold” is jarring, but that was kind of the intention. I just think about little things like that. It’s something that a lot of people don’t put much effort into anymore, but I think you have to think about the entire experience of listening to music, which is more than just pressing “play” on your phone.
For the chapters, we put those out in a very specific order because we wanted to group songs together that would tell a bit of the story without telling the full story that would be in the final tracklist.
As you’ve ascended to new heights of fame, you’re revealing more about yourself and about your personal life in interviews and in your music than ever before, which is the opposite of the trajectory that many musicians take. What enabled you to feel comfortable sharing those aspects of yourself?
Like you said, I think some people deal with fame by closing off more and becoming more private and making their world even smaller. For me, I guess it’s about doing the opposite, where I’ve got less to prove to myself, and I feel more comfortable with being my own cheerleader, and being more encouraging of myself and more supportive of myself, which are things I think were really missing before the days of the pandemic. I think I’m just naturally someone that never used to feel comfortable and safe being vulnerable just because of my own traumas and insecurities and history. It’s something I had to learn, especially over the last year, and especially making this album. I intentionally forced myself to be very, very personal on this album.
I was never very kind to myself, and I was really hard on myself, and I had people in my life who were really hard on me and put a lot of pressure on me and didn’t treat me that great. Now that I got rid of all of that negativity, sort of, I feel like that makes it easier to navigate, because the things that I think are important in life are just being authentic to me, and just really striving to be gentle with myself and validate myself in the fact that I am who I am.
For good, bad and ugly, this is me, and it’s easier for me just to accept that and be kind to myself than to try and fight it or hide it or navigate it in any way. Just gets too exhausting. You have nothing to hide if you’re not hiding anything.
You’ve talked about how this album is the first thing that you’ve made that you’re really proud of. What is it about this album that led to that feeling of pride?
It was a combination of making something so personal at a time where I had gotten to such a low place that it became a sort of catharsis. I used it as healing for myself that was overdue for many years — maybe my whole life, to be honest. And then there was the process of making the album. Obviously, putting so much into it made me really proud of the end result.
I also just got to a place as a person — even outside of being a musician — where I could finally feel deserving of kindness to myself and kindness from others and support for myself and being proud of myself, which is something I just never grew up feeling.
People would pay me compliments even back in the Pony days; someone would say to me, “oh, this is such a great album,” and I’d say, “thank you,” but I would never actually feel anything in that interaction. I’m just a different person these days where I really try to be present. It’s more about me being able to receive it because of how I feel about myself, which is a lot better these days.
How did the recording process differ between Pony, which was released on the indie label Sub Pop, and Bronco, which is on a major label, Columbia Records?
I wasn’t even on Sub Pop when I recorded Pony, really. I think at that time, I had two jobs and recorded Pony over maybe five days; I think it was about $300 a day to use a studio or something like that, I can’t remember. But at that time, that was really a lot of money for me, so we had to do it quick and I basically played almost everything myself. And then I finally found my band and I brought them in to finish three or four more songs at the end of it.
Recording Bronco, obviously, I had a budget from a major label. We were working with a producer. I had my whole band play and we recorded almost everything live on the floor, [because we had] rehearsed for two weeks before it. I had a live string section in it; I had a mariachi trumpet player come in, a banjo bluegrass player. It was amazing. We had totally different resources to make something more expansive.
I love both ways of doing it; I would never have done Pony any other way, because I think that’s what makes Pony really special. But I think with Bronco, it definitely needed to be something bigger. For the next one, who knows? Maybe it’ll be small again. It just kind of depends on the size and the vibe of the album.
Your aesthetic and your sound are obviously very influenced by the American South. What are your thoughts on the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that’s almost emblematic of that region right now?
Well, my opinion on the legislation is I’m against it, of course. I think it’s really fucked up. Do I think that that legislation represents the entire South? I don’t think so. I think there’s always been a lot of queer people from the South and people militantly representing the LGBT community in places where maybe the narrative on a government level is not in their favor. I mean, listen, I’m not from the American South so it’s hard for me to speak on, but of course, a lot of the music I’m inspired by and grew up on and country music in general is influenced from that territory. I don’t want to take representation from the South, but I do think that I and a lot of people have a duty to break the stigma that somehow country music or culture from the Southern states is supposed to be somehow intertwined with bigotry. We all have a responsibility to show up in a culture that shouldn’t be defined by something like someone’s gender or sexuality or choices about what to do with their body or not to do with their body.
After you’ve finished touring, what comes next in terms of your creative output, or just in general?
I am looking forward to enjoying my newly found personal life. I used to be the kind of person who would probably still be on tour until December 31 and playing 300 shows a year and doing everything under the sun. I’ll post tour dates and people get bummed that I’m not going to every city in America and every town and everything, but I just have different priorities now. I have learned over the pandemic that I’m the kind of person that in order to be gentle and kind to myself, I need a balance of work and a personal life. So short answer, I’m looking forward to maybe going on some vacations and chilling at my house and doing some gardening and just, you know, having some Orville time.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Bronco is available for streaming and purchase now.
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