It was only after everything he thought mattered disappeared that Orville Peck truly broke free.
In a few short years, since the release of his debut album, Pony, Peck had emerged as both a vanguard and an icon: a new breed of country outlaw hell-bent on cracking open a restrictive and stale genre, a beloved leader for the queer community, a duet partner for both Miley Cyrus and Shania Twain, a touring dynamo and a thoughtful, personal lyricist. But as his rodeo came to a halt in March 2020, as it did for the rest of the world, Peck – who had been on the road so incessantly that he didn’t even have a home to call his own yet – saw loneliness, darkness and himself in ways he’d never quite experienced before. And through music, he transformed into the purest form of himself yet: a bronco that no cowboy but himself can tame. Thus was born his newest album, Bronco.