Pony

Orville Peck

5/27/2023

As of writing this, Orville Peck only has two (full) albums out, and I will say the choice between which one is my favorite is tougher than I would have thought. Pony (2019) is his first album and it’s sonically simpler, drawing from the image of a dusty crooner in an empty saloon in a dead-end town. There’s neon bar lights that flicker every few seconds and the microphone occasionally dips into pure distortive fuzz. The beer is shit but everyone is drinking lots of it. It’s better to be here than at home.

Pony the album is an old soul. It’s disillusioned. The loves mentioned are in the rear-view mirror, from heartbreak or hatred or just plain time. The youth of the album and the youth of the singer absorb the ache and exhaustion from the landscape. If you’re born here, you’re born tired.

There’s an EP in-between Pony and Bronco (2022) called Show Pony (2020) which I also like a lot, but it signals the change to come. “No Glory in the West” could fit right in with the oeuvre Peck established in his first album, but “Legends Never Die” (ft. Shania Twain) set the stage for the next album.

Bronco isn’t just an album, it’s an Album. The first one was a success and now with one hit in the country scene, Peck starts putting out the bangers. The creaking stage is replaced with a large one, with real polish, and a full band and more backing him up. The stage lights work, everything is Professional and High Definition. Songs have crisp endings with clearly designated emotions for each micro-performance. It is bright and energetic and playful and soulful when need be. Bronco is blinding. It introduces itself, plays its scenes, packs up, and waves goodbye. And then it’s over.

Bronco is a good album. I listened to “C’mon Baby, Cry” while lying on the floor sobbing the winter it released (the album was released in three parts, “C’mon” was in the first part). I usually only skip two songs on it (“City of Gold” and “All I Can Say” [ft. Bria Salamena], and sometimes Hexie Mountains if I’m not in the mood) but they’re the most wistful songs on the album. What I consider a feature of Pony I skip in Bronco.

Partially it’s the lack of atmosphere, all the tracks on Bronco are cleaner. But it’s also that Bronco is nostalgic at the end. It begins with the hits and then ends looking back on its own youth, while still sounding young. It wants to be back there. “Wow, wasn’t that fun? Didn’t we have a great time? And now all we can do is say goodbye.” Pony doesn’t have the energy. “This is how things were,” it says. “And now they are different.” If Pony wants to be back in its youth it isn’t “nostalgic” for it, it feels it like a gaping hole in its chest.

It's weird to see an artist gain hope, almost, over their albums. Usually time makes people more cynical. Although it makes sense to me that I like the edge of Pony, the places where the years have sanded it down unevenly, it surprised me that I missed its bone-deep sadness. It’s almost as if it gave the trick away. As if it’s better to not know exactly how the crooner ended up in that dive bar. As if providing the details blocks the catharsis of imagining it’s us up there, on the stage, singing until the stage lights go out.