Camp cowboy Orville Peck blooms in loneliness

With a strangely soft track and floral imagery that looks like a Midsommar cosplay during a Pride Parade, Summertime is sad and lovely.

Part of the revitalization and modernization of country music, Orville Peck’s contemporary look and deep voice is unique in the industry. Summertime starts with Peck plucking a flower, and-almost like revenge-vines spring up to drag him backwards, and he’s held against a tree like a modern St. Sebastian, pierced by thorns, unable to move. Peck is the only person in the video, his bright blue eyes teary behind his signature mask. 

The floral fantasy is almost a nightmare. Peck floats above the field, revealing that underneath his black leather jacket is a campy beautifully three-dimensional flowered shirt. It’s weird, strange, and evokes a strange, deliberate softness that country music doesn’t usually get to have. There is a reclamation of solitude, a naivety towards growth, that Peck embodies. 

Directed by Drew Kirsch out of Happy Place, the film allows Peck to be weird and graceless, unapologetic and abandoned. The just-strange-enough VFX is a southern gothic wilderness, a rehabilitation of the world; a transformation through loss. With every video and album Peck continues to solidify his presence as an prescient modern artist, capable of both innocence and understanding.