Review: Josie Cotton’s single ‘Painting in Blood’

By Emilio “Emi” Diaz, Rock At Night Tampa

Single Review: “Painting in Blood” – Release date April 11, 2023

Josie Cotton’s song “Painting in Blood” from her new album Day of the Gun will take you through the sepia-painted world of Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Westerns, albeit with some 60s nostalgia and dark humor mixed in. She tells the story of a girl in over her head, modeling for a murderer and surrounded by danger and guns and blood. This all goes on while Josie sings the gleefully wicked praises of the world-famous Italian filmmaker that brought us such masterpieces as “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly” and “Fistful of Dollars”, starring Clint Eastwood (the last of which is an English adaptation of the Akira Kurosawa masterpiece “Yojimbo” starring the incomparable Toshiro Mifune). Each verse reminds the listener, and the girl, that her fate is sealed, always just one step behind her with black-gloved hands, her future is painted with blood. And we’re all here for it.