Take Jack Horton, a Portland-based singer-songwriter whose path to folk-Americana included stops at Japanese law school, Tokyo piano bars, corporate boardrooms, and government offices. His latest EP, "Imperfections," feels like finding someone's private journal set to music. And that someone happens to write really, really well. The five-song collection opens with "Set Me Free," a piano-driven confession that might surprise anyone expecting typical breakup bitterness. Horton...

Before a guitar chord can become an argument, it usually begins as a private disturbance. A television flickers in a locked-down room. A former sailor sees an old enemy image placed beside a strange public gesture of peace. That is the uneasy ground beneath "War Killer," the Reetoxa and it gives the track its charge: not polish for its own sake, but a human reaction...