Orville Peck - Mule

His face is the only thing hidden on Orville Peck’s fourth album.

The masked country singer’s newest LP comes two years onwards from his last full-length effort, Stampede, and tells the story of a real-life breakdown he went through and the subsequent difficult road to recovery. 

The album kicks off with the somewhat eerie acapella intro track, “Prologue (Eulogy of a Man Turned Mule)”, where Emmylou Harris, Noah Cyrus and Allison Russell introduce the premise of the album in a beautifully somber chorus. This opener sets the tone well for the solemn undertones present throughout the record thematically, varying in how overt they are but present pretty much throughout. Even the songs with brighter sounds musically, such as “Ring The Bell”, are oftentimes pretty bleak in terms of their lyrical content. 

The writing works through the album’s themes very capably, with Orville Peck serving as a very engaging narrator as the story progresses. The closing stretch in particular contains a lot of really well put-together tracks from a lyrical standpoint, such as “Run Out Of Road”, and especially the closer and title track, “Mule”, which is one of the record’s main highlights, and contains a host of hard-hitting lines, such as “I don’t believe in God, but praying’s all I’ve got // It’s better than the urge to fade away”. That track also features Peck’s sincerest and most vulnerable-sounding vocal delivery on the record, making it probably the most impactful song that the project has to offer. His deliveries throughout the project are quite earnest, with his signature rich, velvety vocals standing out against the instrumentals without dominating them excessively. 

While Peck is the only listed writer on all thirteen tracks on the album, they also only feature a single producer — Jay Joyce. They don’t lose out in terms of quality for it, however – the album’s sound feels full and well-rounded. The only issue sonically is that, when it comes to certain tracks, things get a little too polished, taking some of the edge off the story being told. At other times, however, Joyce does very well leaning into a more chaotic sound, like on the latter part of “Blue Skies”, arguably the best track on the album.

Overall, Mule is Orville Peck’s most revealing and unreserved work so far. It’s vulnerable, personal and very compelling in its narration of his personal journey in a torrid stage of his life. The production is at times a little blander than the content could’ve done with, but it doesn’t numb the impact too much, still leaving a hard-hitting narrative. Orville Peck remains a unique performer within the country space, and his artistry is displayed very well on this record.

7.5/10