Orville Peck
The penultimate day of AmericanaFest 2019 included a long, lazy afternoon of show-hopping between downtown, East Side and Berry Hill daytime parties where several of the week’s acts played stripped-down pop-up sets. But once the sun went down, all roads led to Mercy Lounge for Orville Peck, the queer Canadian crooner riding a strong buzz into the fest from his sleeper-hit Sub Pop debut Pony, a record released to little fanfare in March but that continues to gather steam six months onward.
Peck has arrived right on time to a country landscape experiencing a pronounced shift away from straight-white-maleness. As the emcee who announced him and his five-piece band informed the standing-room crowd, he’s the cover boy of the latest British edition of GQ. But the mask wasn’t the only reason Peck stood out among AmericanaFest’s performers. He had the room in the palm of his hand Saturday night with a red-hot festival-length set that was high on atmospherics but didn’t waste a moment.
Peck’s music combines plainspoken stories of love and loss, sung in a bottomless baritone, with gothy, ’gazey guitar sounds. Imagine Roy Orbison jamming with Joy Division, and you’re getting close. Recorded, it’s sparse and uncluttered, giving every word and every chord room to resonate as they’re meant to. Live, he and his hat-clad band filled out that negative space with bright, plangent guitar tones and harmonies that really popped, turning material so intimate on record into a communal-feeling experience.
Orville Peck
Saturday’s set showcased the strengths of each individual song. The melancholic, Patsy Cline-channeling waltz “Roses Are Falling,” the doomy, vibrato-heavy “Big Sky,” the ecstatic post-punk rock-out at the end of “Buffalo Run” — each inhabited its own world, yet Peck’s charisma and clarity of vision made it all hang together fluidly. Though the shortness of the set meant no previously unreleased material, it did include one cover: a Gun Club-style reinterpretation of Gram Parsons’ “Ooh Las Vegas” that recalled Emmylou Harris’ version. Word on the street is that there’s more coming soon from Peck, but for now, he gave festivalgoers a performance sure to be talked about long after AmericanaFest is over.
Aubrie Sellers
Earlier, Nashville singer-songwriter Aubrie Sellers delivered a stellar set of her own that, like Peck’s, was “of country” but decidedly more rock-leaning. The soulful stomp of Sellers' Steve Earle collab “My Love Will Not Change” and other selections off her forthcoming second LP Far From Home contrasted bold, radio-ready vocals with ambient, searching guitar interplay and a keyed-up rhythm section. Though Sellers' songwriting is firmly rooted in country, her band's sound brought to mind early U2, or more recent post-punk badasses Savages, to superb effect.
