My generation is arguably the last one to grow up hearing the occasional country song on top-40 radio. When I was a kid, songs by Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson and the like regularly appeared in Billboard’s Top 10, and a few of them even topped the charts. Country music still sells—these days, arguably better than ever—but it occupies its own ecosystem; Morgan Wallen, Gabby Barrett and Chris Stapleton may be superstars, but you’re unlikely to see them on a pop festival bill, mixing it up with Tame Impala and Lizzo. It just doesn’t happen.
However, that doesn’t mean those two worlds can’t mix. (See: Taylor Swift, also “Old Town Road.”) Orville Peck, who plays House of Blues on April 22, and Yola, who plays the same venue on April 26, are living proof that the walls separating country music from pop still have doors and sizable windows in them, through which influences, stylistic flourishes and entire songs can pass. These artists aren’t of the No Depression school, where punk decelerated into twang. The music they make is sincere, big-hearted pop country, and it belongs on a mass market festival stage—like, say, Coachella, which Peck and Yola will play before and after their Vegas visit.
Odds are good you’ve at least seen Orville Peck before now. His distinctive fringed mask (actually one of many, all of them individually named) is a Daft Punk-level flex, but that kinda thing only works if the music you make is good enough to make people want to know the face of the artist who made it. And Peck, whose sophomore album Bronco just dropped, is that good.
A velvet-voiced baritone whose gift for the theatrical never overwhelms a song’s emotional impact, Peck’s talents stubbornly resist apples-to-apples comparison. He’s a professed fan of Merle Haggard, but also of Whitney Houston; you can hear the influence of both in the torchy “Dead of Night.” Bronco’s “Daytona Sand” evokes Roy Orbison, Morrissey, Johnny Cash and the Twin Peaks music of Angelo Badalamenti without borrowing directly from any of them. His music is heartrending in feel, cinematic in scope. Rarely do artists emerge with such a confident, indelible footprint; it’s almost as if he’s been with us all along, traveling the back roads incognito since the CB radio era.
Yola is something else entirely. Considering how strongly rooted she is in classic American forms—country and R&B—her music feels unexpectedly audacious and fresh. The twangy shuffle of “Diamond Studded Shoes” could have been a hit in 1972, as could the dreamy soul of “Now You’re Here”—but Yola isn’t a retro act; she’s too passionate for that, too alive. Her vocals are so warm, human and beguiling that you can only imagine them existing at the precise moment you’re hearing them. No matter how many times you listen to her most recent album, last year’s Stand for Myself, you always feel like you’ve only just discovered its sweet, affecting songs.
However, the most intriguing thing about both artists is that they’re coming at this very American music from places you might not expect. Peck is South African (by way of Canada), and also proudly gay, a fact he doesn’t even begin to hide in his lyrics. Yola, born Yolanda Claire Quartey, is Black and British—and still, this Bristol-raised singer-songwriter has managed to get Grammy-nominated for Best Americana Album two times now.
Their successes bode well for the future of both country and pop. It shows that a lot of people are willing to dismiss their preconceived ideas of what makes the proverbial good country or pop song, and to just cross through the wall—from one side or from the other—to enjoy it. For a fitting example of this, search for Peck and Yola together on YouTube: You’ll find them duetting live on “Islands in the Stream,” a chart-topping hit for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton in 1983. As performed by these two new country stars, it sounds like a chart-topper all over again.
ORVILLE PECK April 22, 8 p.m., $43. House of Blues,702-632-7600, livenation.com.
YOLA April 26, 7:30 p.m., $30. House of Blues, 702-632-7600, livenation.com.
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