Jacob Tell could have waited. After Hard To Be Human he had every right to disappear for a year and come back with something even heavier. Instead he surfaced barely months later with Under The Influence, a short, all-covers EP that feels like someone quietly slipping out the back door while the party is still going. It’s an odd move, and an oddly touching one.

Seven songs, all borrowed, none written by him. On paper it looks like a breather, the kind of project artists do when they need to remember why they started. In practice it feels more like Jacob Tell sitting down with the records that first messed him up and seeing what still fits. The title is almost too honest. It feels like he’s letting us sit in the room with the records that raised him. The first thing that strikes you is how little interest Tell has in doing the expected “sensitive singer-songwriter does respectful acoustic versions” thing.

He opens with Memphis, Tennessee, Chuck Berry’s bright, rolling rock’n’roll number. It’s a bold swing. Tell has built his name on softer, more introspective territory, yet here he leans into the swagger and drive of the original without smoothing it out completely. The result sits somewhere between homage and gentle reclamation. For a moment you hear the kid who first fell in love with the sound of electric guitars and storytelling in three minutes flat.

He follows it with something that feels like coming home to his natural register: The Only Living Boy in New York. This might be the strongest cut on the whole EP. Tell doesn’t try to compete with Simon & Garfunkel’s delicate harmony; instead he wraps the song in a kind of hazy, late-night introspection that feels entirely his own. The melancholy is still there, but it’s warmer, less brittle. I kept thinking how perfectly the song matches the mood of someone taking a breath between big chapters.

From there the EP starts shape-shifting. Femme Fatale arrives like a cool draft through an open window. The Velvet Underground edge is preserved, but Tell adds this misty, almost dream-pop distance that makes the seduction feel stranger and more distant. There’s a light darkness to it, the kind that doesn’t announce itself loudly but lingers. It’s easily the most stylistically adventurous moment here and one that suggests Tell’s idea of influence isn’t limited to comfort zones.

Working Class Hero was always going to be loaded. Lennon’s bitter class autopsy in the hands of an artist who just put out a record about how hard it is to stay human feels almost too on-the-nose. The performance sits right on the line between tribute and quiet acknowledgment that some songs refuse to become nostalgia. It’s the moment where you remember this “casual” covers project still carries some of the same vibe as his original work. Not every track lands with the same weight.

Stolen Car is pleasant, intimate, and exactly the kind of warm Springsteen ballad you’d expect from an artist in decompression mode. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away closes things on a gentler, almost hopeful note, turning the Beatles’ hidden melancholy into something that feels like quiet resilience. The EP ends not with a bang but with a kind of earned calm.

What makes Under The Influence more than just a palate cleanser is how unapologetically personal it feels despite containing zero original songs. Tell is clearly having a conversation with his ghosts—Chuck Berry’s energy, Lennon’s bite, Lou Reed’s cool detachment, Springsteen’s working-man heart. You sense him testing which parts of those voices still fit, which ones he’s outgrown, and which ones he wants to carry forward into the much more confessional Someone To Cry To that’s already in the works with Don Douglass.

Cover albums are strange creatures in general. They exist in this grey zone between deep respect for the original and the quiet arrogance of saying “I have something else to say with this.” Jacob Tell mostly stays on the right side of that line. His versions don’t try to overthrow the canon or radically reinvent the songs. Instead they feel like careful translations — same emotional core, but filtered through his own softer light and slightly removed perspective.

Some feel like pure nostalgia trips, others like flexes of taste, and a few — the rare ones — arrive as almost confessional acts. Under The Influence sits in that last category. Jacob Tell letting us watch him think out loud about the voices that still live inside his head right before he dives into what he says will be his most exposed work yet. In the end this little EP does something quietly valuable. It shows an artist who isn’t afraid to step away from his own narrative for a minute just to remember where it started. And in doing so, he accidentally tells us more about who he is than a lot of grand original statements ever could.

I’m not sure every artist could pull off a covers record this slight without it feeling like filler. Tell does, mostly because he never pretends it’s anything grander than it is: a warm, slightly unguarded thank-you note to the music that made him. It’s modest in scope but strangely revealing in spirit. Sometimes the most interesting thing an artist can do between big statements is simply show you where they came from. Jacob Tell just did exactly that.

All information provided is prepared in accordance with editorial standards and is intended to offer useful insights for readers. Please note that the opinions, interpretations, and evaluations expressed by the author may substantially differ from the viewpoints of our readers or the general public at large, and we respect the diversity of opinions.