Orville Peck shared a new single, “Already Gone.” The song comes off his forthcoming album, Mule, out Sept. 18 via Warner Records.
“Already Gone” was produced by Jay Joyce and written by Peck with Jacob Portrait. It features Peck’s five-piece band playing alongside Molly Tuttle, Ketch Secor, and Ry Jennings. The song describes Peck’s journey through addiction and recovery, the centerpiece of the LP.
“‘Already Gone’ lands early in the album’s story, when I first entered the rehab facility,” Peck explained in a statement. “I accepted the decision to seek treatment but deep down I believed I didn’t have a problem. The video reflects my arrogant mindset as I picture the experience as a lighthearted musical, while in reality, I was in total crisis.”
A music video for the track, directed by Austin Peters, brings Peck into the rehab facility, showcasing group sessions, therapy, taking pills out of tiny paper cups, and a tearful exit. Noah Cyrus, Allison Russel, and Cathy Cooper make their third appearance in the clip in recurring roles as figments of Orville’s mind following the videos for “Prologue (Eulogy of a Man Turned Mule)” and “Too Little, Too Late.”
Mule tells a chronological story of the worst year of Peck’s life, when he broke up with his partner, succumbed to the depths of addiction, went to rehab, got sober, and faced a reckoning with both the public and private versions of himself: not the masks he wears as costume, but the ones we all use to cope and frame how we appear to the world.
“I was in one of the worst places in my life, for sure,” he recently told Rolling Stone. “I was a bad addict, a coping alcoholic. 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 realizations to come. It was something that needed to happen.”
Peck’s Man Turned Mule Tour kicks off in San Francisco on Sept. 12 and runs through November. One dollar from every ticket sold on the North American dates will be donated to the Trevor Project to support its mission to provide crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ+ young people.
