"[On her debut], it was clear Raymond could re-create the past. It was less clear what she kept of her own in that gilded trove. But "Strange Lights..." (...) leaves no doubt that she is amog the most vital, dynamic voices within the still-teeming solo guitar orbit. Recorded alone in her Brighton basement flat during quarantine, these eight song are alternately dizzying and despondent, troubled and triumphant, an encapsulation of our current emotional vertigo ... Raymond won early praise for sounding like an anachronism, an Appalachian original who'd withstood the last American century. But on "Strange Lights...", she sounds present in our moment and her life, applying her erudition to the experience of existence. These audacious pieces show us Raymond's world, not her record collection".
