Bria Salmena is best known as the frontwoman of Toronto post-punks FRIGS and as a key member of queer country sensation Orville Peck’s backing band. Back in 2021, released Cuntry Covers Vol. 1 via Sub Pop, a collection of takes on classic tracks by the likes of John Cale, Lucinda Williams and Karen Dalton. Recorded with multi-instrumentalist and fellow Peck band member Duncan Hay Jennings, the EP was a challenge to country music’s conservative image and a celebration of those who have subverted it in the past. “Country music, as much as any other art form, should be an arena for representation, expression and provocation,” Salmena said of the release. “I have a ton of reverence for artists who came before me and challenged the primarily white-heterosexual status quo.”
Now Bria has returned with Cuntry Covers Vol. 2, six more reinterpretations that follow the same blueprint, this time with more experimentation and larger, more complex arrangements. It was recorded in a makeshift home studio with the help of an impressive cast of Toronto musicians, including Lucas Savatti (FRIGS), Simone Baril (US Girls, The Highest Order, Darlene Shrugg, Partner), Andrew Manktelow and Jaime Rae McCuaig.
The record opens with what Sub Pop call “a pumping, synth-led 1990s dance version” of Paula Cole’s ‘Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?’, amplifying the sense of both potential and disillusionment of Cole’s tale into something dark and almost dystopian. An inventive take on ‘When You Know Why You’re Happy’ by fellow Canadian Mary Margaret O’Hara follows, emphasising the original’s intertwining threads of uplifting empowerment and sombre darkness.
But the most drastic departure is reserved for Loretta Lynn’s ‘Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)’. The closest thing to a punk rock song on the record, it’s a fierce celebration of Lynn’s defiant feminist ballad that, despite controversy, topped the country charts in 1967. “We wanted to reimagine all the confidence and assertion in Loretta Lynn’s version into an upbeat and frantic pop song” Bria says. “One that reminded me of my seventeen-year-old self when I heard it for the first time.”
The second half of the EP generally plays more straight and true with the originals. Her interpretation of Nick Cave’s ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ (itself a cover of the Jimmy Webb/Johnny Rivers 1966 original) maintains the ominous brooding gloom, while Gillian Welsh’s epic masterpiece ‘I Dream a Highway’ is performed with its mesmeric melancholy intact.
The closing track, despite being the most straightforward, is perhaps the standout, a warm and swaying rendition of Robert Lester Folsom’s ‘See You Later I’m Gone’. “Summer leaves are turning brown, they’re hanging loose on every limb,” Bria sings in an opening line that perfectly encapsulates the song’s bittersweet atmosphere, “and pretty soon they’ll flutter down, summer sun is growing dim.”
See you later I’m gone
The time has come and I must be leaving
See you later, see you later
See you later I’m gone
