Orville Peck has opened up about how a suicide attempt in 2023 inspired some of his most personal music to date on new album ‘Mule’.
- READ MORE: Orville Peck – ‘Bronco’ review: masked man bares his soul with retro-country razzle-dazzle
The country singer revealed in a new interview that he had been struggling with his mental and physical health before he was forced to cancel his ‘Bronco’ tour in June 2023. Two days before announcing the cancellation, Peck said he intentionally overdosed.
“I was a bad addict, a coping alcoholic,” he told Rolling Stone recently. “And I had this spiral moment, where I went back to my hotel and tried to take my life. It was a big turning point for me, with a lot of realisations to come. It was something that needed to happen.”
Peck said he was “in one of the worst places” of his life, and that the experience, along with a breakup and a stint in rehab, became the foundation for upcoming fourth album, ‘Mule’, which is set to arrive on September 18 via Warner Records – you can pre-order it here.
“I think I have learned that whenever I shy away from telling the truth about whatever I am going through in my music, or whenever I’ve been hesitant to really go there, I’m always a little bit disappointed with the product, and I feel like I’m cheating myself a bit,” Peck said of the unflinching look at his addiction on the new album.
“What I was really trying to capture in terms of the concept, there was no way to gloss over or sugarcoat it.”
A press release describing ‘Mule’ said the 13-song collection would serve as a “chronological timeline of the year that reshaped [Peck’s] life, tracing the collapse of addiction, the difficult pursuit of sobriety, and the slow, often uncertain process of rebuilding”.
It continued: “Told with unflinching honesty, humour, and compassion, Mule finds Peck confronting love, loss, and identity through songs that move fluidly between classic country storytelling, bluegrass, and expansive Americana.”
Peck also told Rolling Stone that his time in rehab shaped the album track ‘Rehab Blues’, which sees him sing: “So catch me on the evening news / Dumb f*g dies from the rehab blues.”
“I think as a sensitive artist, the impulse would be to write a really sad, heavy song about being in rehab,” Peck said of the track. “But the reality is, I didn’t want to be there. I thought it was a waste of time, that I’m unique and didn’t have a problem. So I was like, I’m going to write the funniest song about this experience, because at the time I was just like, ‘Fuck this. I want to leave.’”
Talking to NME previously about how he channels his identity in his work, Peck said there was beauty in presenting a “heightened version” of yourself, “so it’s really sincere on one hand and on [the other] hand it’s larger-than-life, but it’s nice that those things can live side-by-side.”
He had previously touched on people’s attempts to ‘unmask’ him and reveal his identity, saying it took away his artistic expression and fed into homophobic critiques of him and his work.
“Traversing this industry as a gay country musician I already endure daily hate, bullying, aggression and people actively trying to discredit what I do,” he shared. “All I ask is that people respect my work (and more importantly) my fans enough to maintain this crucial part of my expression as an artist.”
Peck’s 2022 LP ‘Bronco‘ scored a four-star review from NME. “This is a rich landscape: wholly modern and proudly queer. It’s an album of unabashed growth, as the artist gets in his feelings but never veers into self-pity,” it read.
“The masked cowboy is – paradoxically – baring his soul, unbridled and all the better for it. On ‘Bronco’, Peck wears his identity as matter-of-factly as the album’s retro-country razzle-dazzle. Allow him to sweep you away on horseback into the dusty sunset.”
