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Goth/shoegaze-adjacent country singer Orville Peck has shared “Big Sky,” the first single off his forthcoming debut album for Sub Pop, due out in 2019. The song, along with its accompanying video, mark Peck’s first foray into the major labels.
In 2018, American indie music seemed to fall in love with the cowboy as an image of classic America, a thing to be ridiculed, ripped off and ultimately transformed through powerful musical meditations on what it means to be the loner hero. Orville Peck’s shoegaze-y outlaw country is focused on that word that precedes “hero”—his is a lonely, lonely world, and on “Big Sky,” the classic country cowboy faces an existential crisis of personal dissolution.
The song is a document of failed lovers and injured minds. “Fell in love with a rider / Dirt king, black crown,” Peck sings over dusty radiator riffs and prickle-pear banjo. “I like him best when he’s not around / He gets me high—oh, big sky.” It takes no joy in the seclusion that classic country would find so liberating. This cowboy is driven out of the city and into the high country not by some American individualism, but through the repeated breakdown of human contact. It’s not salvation he sees there, only isolation.
Peck will be touring with Lord Huron in 2019. Find a full list of those dates further down.
Listen to “Big Sky” below.
Orville Peck Tour Dates:
January
04 – Hamilton, Ont. @ Casbah (Exclaim! Class of 2019 showcase)
05 – Toronto, Ont. @ The Monarch (Exclaim! Class of 2019 showcase)
February
28 – London, U.K. @ Islington
March
01 – London, U.K. @ Servant Jazz Quarters
02 – London, U.K. @ The Shacklewell Arms
05 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Sugarfactory
06 – Berlin, Germany @ Auster-Club
May
06 – Columbia, Mo. @ The Blue Note*
07 – Oklahoma City, Okla. @ The Criterion*
09 – El Paso, Texas @ Lowbrow Palace*
10 – Albuquerque, N.M. @ Sunshine Theatre*
11 – Tucson, Ariz. @ Rialto Theatre*
12 – Phoenix, Ariz. @ The Van Buren*
(* w/ Lord Huron)