The consistently productive Ashley Raines returns with a small collection of cover songs. Before hearing a note it is instantly interesting for the section of covers alone. The title track is taken from possibly America’s greatest living band, Wilco. On Wilco’s “I’ll Fight” Raines digs deep in the soul of the song to reveal the foreign appeal of it. From Raines’ lips the lyrics sound a little more yearning and desperate, setting the tone for the EP. It should come as no surprise that the songs here all have a dark tone. It should come as no surprise that “bitter” is in the title of two of the songs either.

With covers taken from the likes of Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and the Kinks you might think Raines has taken a well worn path here but you couldn’t be further from the truth. His selection from Dylan’s immense catalog is “All The Tired Horses” and consists of two lines repeated on end for over four minutes, not your typical Dylan song, I mean, Dylan’s “Up to Me” has like 17 verses right? This song is two lines. The funny thing is that it works. You can hear the exhaustion in Raines’ voice, the music builds and and releases making the song actually quite interesting. On The Kinks’ “Strangers” we find Raines once again choosing the path less taken with a quite nice rundown of the mid-era Kinks song. Overall the song choices are very strange here but are surprisingly cohesive considering the artists chosen which is exactly what makes the 7 song sampling work well.

Key Tracks: “All The Tired Horses” “Strangers”