The emphasis on the rhinestone icon inevitably highlights Bronco’s one failing: The album would be better if Peck could actually sing. Mostly, though, Bronco sounds like a gothic Elvis Presley, a connection Peck underscores with multiple winks at the King, such as the pointed joke in “Outta Time”: “I meet a girl who’s trying to shoot the breeze/She tells me she don’t like Elvis/I say I want a little less conversation please.” As on Pony, the ghost of Roy Orbison lurks at the heart of the melodrama. The instrumental details suggest a Nashville sound unmoored from commercial considerations, while the bottomless echo evokes the dusty landscapes created by Lee Hazlewood and Duane Eddy. Augmenting Peck’s touring band with a number of Nashville session musicians, Joyce helps Peck articulate his vision of an invented American past, giving these fantasias gritty gravitas while managing the trick of being self-aware but not camp. The effectiveness of these pastiches is a testament to Jay Joyce’s skill. “C’mon Baby, Cry” also feels quintessentially Californian, as its swelling chorus, deep reverb, and nimble melody conjure memories of AM golden oldies. Many of the best moments are nods to that progressive era, especially the shimmering “The Curse of the Blackened Eye” and the warm sighs of “Outta Time,” with references to the PCH and Malibu evoking the peak era of soft rock. Peck weaves a tapestry of mid-century American music, grounding himself in the rock and country made somewhere between the emergence of Elvis Presley and the rise of the Beatles while dabbling in the sun-bleached hippie hangover of the early 1970s.

Then again, Bronco hardly sounds or feels like modern country. Peck populates his songs with same-sex love, lust, and longing, never lingering on the fact that open homosexuality remains rare within country music. The escalation of scale feels less like an attempt to dive into the country mainstream than the sign of an idiosyncratic artist seizing all available opportunities to stretch his eccentricities to their limits.ĭelivered with all the urgency of a CinemaScope potboiler, “Daytona Sand” gets Bronco off to a galloping start, establishing the album’s musical and emotional parameters: The sounds are overheated, the stories told in arid detail.

Cut with Jay Joyce-the producer behind all of Eric Church’s albums, along with excellent records by Miranda Lambert, Brandy Clark, Brothers Osborne, and Ashley McBryde- Bronco is so bold and colorful, it’s as if it was written with the silver screen in mind. Bronco, the first full-length released under his new deal with Columbia, is the polar opposite of the spare, spooky Pony.

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