Here's proof positive that even Ryan Adams understands that he is far too prolific. Two of the songs contained on this EP are, to my ears, BETTER than the originals contained elsewhere in this prodigious musician's tangled oeuvre (that's pretentious for "other albums")
"If I Am A Stranger" is a very nice song from Adams' Grateful Dead-ish two-fer disc, "Cold Roses." But it really gets lost in the sound of the album; it sounds of a piece with everything else Cut here live in the studio with whatever configuration of Cardinals he has these days (sort of like Steve Earle's Dukes), the song loses some of its twangier edge and instead has new life breathed into it. The band opens it up and makes it live - that's sort of abstract, but if you compare the two versions, you might see what I mean.
He does the same to "Dear John," a tune from "Jacksonville City Nights" that he penned with Norah Jones. Again, nice song, but it gets buried in the honky-tonk conceit of the work from which it spawned. The treatment it gets here adds new dimension to the tune.
I also have to recommend the band's cover of Alice in Chains' "Down In A Hole." The other songs are also nice on first listen, but those are the three that really stand out
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