“Hello, I’m Orville Peck”. With the sound of Bob Dylan’s ‘All The Tired Horses’ heralding him onto the stage, the man wearing a black Stetson hat and matching fringed, face-obscuring mask strides up to the microphone in his black cowboy boots and introduces himself. He may well present as an international man of mystery, a man with no (real) name, but he doesn’t really require any introduction. The “house full” signs outside nearly every single one of the venues on this his first ever tour of Europe tells us that plenty of people know exactly who he is. But just in case you don’t, he is Orville Peck; he is the lone rider, a country singer and every inch the rising star.
This show – the third date on a tour that will take Orville Peck from the UK to Central Europe, across Scandinavia and then end up at the Super Bock Super Rock festival in Lisbon in a month’s time – had been moved across town from the Brudenell Social Club to the larger capacity Irish Centre to meet with overwhelming demand. And the man in the bright red Nudie Cohn-style shirt with white tassels does not disappoint the 500-strong crowd.
Orville Peck released his debut album Pony on Sub Pop back in April. Peppered with songs about heartbreak, longing, vulnerability and regret, the man with rain in his boots has produced a record that captures perfectly the spirit of the lonesome cowboy, imbuing all those restless feelings with the far more sinister edge of an outlaw. And with his music and associated identity Peck is following along a trail already blazed by earlier country outsiders such as Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson.
Backed by his four-piece band, Orville Peck brings these songs to rebellious life in concert. All bar ‘Old River’, he plays Pony in its entirety. Peck tosses in a couple of barnstorming covers for very good measure – George Jones and Tammy Wynette’s ‘Something To Brag About’ and Gram Parsons’ ‘Ooh Las Vegas’ – riotously duetting on both with his “right-hand woman” Bria Salmena, she of Canadian indie-rock band FRIGS fame.
Orville Peck signs off with ‘Take You Back (The Iron Hoof Cattle Call)’, his clarion call for solidarity, inviting the audience to join him in unison by whistling along with the tune. He is rightly urged back for an encore. Peck duly obliges with a dramatic rendition of Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Fancy’, a most fitting finale given Gentry’s pioneering role in furthering the course of country music whilst remaining enigmatically hidden from the wider public view.
Photos: Simon Godley
More photos from this show are HERE
