Alex Bleeker, bassist of Real Estate and leader of his own Freaks, has never sounded more peaceful and easy. Though the word “outlaw” recurs on half of the six songs of Bleeker’s Bet Your Ass EP, the music and most of the lyrics suggest a more laid-back existence. Built on a template of gentle drum-machine folk, Bet Your Ass moves from perhaps the world’s mellowest song about drunk driving (“Drinkin and Drivin’“) to Ween-like instrumentals (“Psychic Outlaw”). Using a preset beat seemingly straight off a Casio keyboard for the collection’s title track, the down-home charm lands somewhere between the country-soul wisdom of the early ‘70s Beach Boys and the elevated grace of John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.” The wisdom doesn’t always make it across, as on the opening “Mesa Blue,” perhaps more a mood than a specific expression. But it’s a formula that Bleeker more or less perfects for the disc-closing cover of Little Wings’ “Faith Children,” a soft and vaguely surf-pop hymnal with a pleasing tumble of syllables crunched into a rising melody that lands Bleeker’s voice just near the edge of its range, like someone at the edge of their particular self and looking beyond.