Chill factor: Windy City singer-songwriter Edith Frost nips at our ears and hearts with two new albums

Her voice overflows with an earthy sweetness one typically encounters on dusty country records, yet singer-songwriter Edith Frost ignores distinctions between old and new, city and country, art and kitsch. Her Chicago apartment is loaded with Hello Kitty tchotchkes and cowgirl memorabilia; 15 feet of vinyl eat away at her living room while her hard drive swells with MP3 files. She bought her first modem in 1982, launched her first website in 1994 (it was devoted to cowgirls) and currently maintains a site about her music so thorough that it lists crummy reviews alongside raves and even highlights the portions of her interviews that she deems most embarrassing.

Frost’s Bite

Speaking on the phone with singer and songwriter Edith Frost is a life-affirming experience. Her voice has an infectious, inherent enthusiasm, an irrepressible energy, and her conversation is punctuated with both quiet little asides to herself and deep, rapid bursts of laughter that betray a joy, a literal giddiness, about her work.

In A Van Down By The Lake

After about 20 years of pursuing her career singer songwriter Edith Frost has only recently enjoyed some national attention. Her new album, Wonder Wonder, is a curious exploration of music that has no real definition. Her careful insight and poetic lyrical approach are certainly unique. The Leader recently had a short chat with Edith Frost — in her own tour van.

Rockabilly¹ artist Edith Frost sings from the past
By John Staton, Morning Star Correspondent

For Chicago-based singer/songwriter Edith Frost, they just don’t write ‘em like they used to.

"I collect really old-timey stuff," Ms. Frost says, speaking from her home in Chicago during a phone interview.  "My mom actually has a cylinder player and a Victrola, and so when I was growing up I was hearing really, really antique music.  So it’s in me.  I think the earliest songs that were recorded are some of the best tunes that you can find."

Keepin’ It Real
Singer-songwriter Edith Frost seeks perfect imperfection

You’d think (John Lennon certainly did) that people would have had enough of silly love songs. The general public is offered the bulk of its music in four-minute televised blips of celebrated alienation courtesy of Pro Tools and some guy who can’t come to grips with his (pick one) stardom / family / fans / friends / groupies.

Fast and efficient.  Those are the words singer-songwriter Edith Frost uses to describe her latest studio experience.  Sitting in her dust-covered apartment, she’s hoping the workers tearing out the walls and installing new air ducts think the same way.

Killer Frost

Edith Frost’s face is open as a full moon, with round gray-blue eyes and half-curly bangs exactly like the ones she had as a kid.  Don’t be fooled.  The country Midwestern crooner may say things such as "I’ve always been just my guitar and voice.  I’m lucky if I have the skills to put it on a crappy four-track cassette."  But she’s not as guileless as all that.

Security 101: An email discussion about privacy with Edith Frost by Jenny Toomey & Kristin Thomson
from the Machine

And you thought rock chicks were helpless? Edith Frost has not only recorded a number of marvelous CDs for Drag City, but she’s also been an internet aficionado for years. She was the first person to challenge Kristin to forget those web software programs and "learn the code" (HTML, that is) and just recently showed Jenny her two computer system. Edith will be hosting an Insound chat on January 25 about Internet security and other musictech musings, and she’s been nice enough to prep us all by providing us with the basics. Linux fans, take note!

Last seen supporting Willard Grant Conspiracy, wooing audiences with her gentle good-humoured charms, Chicago’s Edith Frost is an unassuming and delightful character. She writes simple neat songs that worm their way into your affection without even trying. You could easily place Edith Frost into the "alternative country" pigeonhole but you’d be forgetting her individuality; her songs of naïve innocence and experience. Her songs dare to be of all things, simply human.

The recorded Edith Frost is deliberate; pacing her beautiful country-tinged voice over sweet sweeps of guitar.  Live, a schoolgirl-like nervousness wins the audience’s hearts as she furiously attempts to avert her eyes from the spotlight.

Her first full length, Calling Over Time, features the Chicago personalities of Jim O’Rourke, David Grubbs, Rick Rizzo and Rian Murphy, as well as the High Llamas’ Sean O’Hagan.  The next album, Telescopic, secured her as a vital artist with its warmth and tragedy backed by washed-out distortion, electronic night sounds, and of course, Frost’s unbelievably sweet voice.  She returned from an extensive European tour to her transplanted home of Chicago for a break from performing.  It was there that I found her.

Edith Frost Talks Head, Hands, Hair

It’s a sort of real-life, indie rock Cinderella story.  In the process of a divorce, singer-songer Edith Frost sends a home-made demo to Drag City, a hipper-than-thou record label whose artists she admires.  Some months later, her tape is discovered at the bottom of a slush pile, and the label is so blown away that they immediately release an Edith Frost EP and arrange for the singer to record a full length album backed by a couple of indie Chicago’s most respected musicians.  When Calling Over Time is released, a scattering of cool critics drool and Frost’s mournful, yearning voice is compared to those of the big guns: Patsy Cline’s and Billy Holiday’s.  Just when it seems that Frost’s softly, slowly twangy album and Texas roots are going to get her pegged as part of the alterna-country movement, she releases Telescopic, which opens with fuzzed-out guitar chords and doesn’t get any less psychedelic from there.  Although musically the albums differ, Frost’s soulful voice and vaguely, heart-rendingly true lyrics remain a constant, and the praise for these keeps on a-coming faster and louder.  For the body issue of Maxine, we asked this ethereal chanteuse to talk about the physical.

Marfa, Texas: Pop. 2424

Edith Frost has never been to Marfa. She grew up in Texas and Mexico and has lived in New York. In support of her two albums, Frost has traveled across the US and Europe, but she has yet to go to Marfa. Instead, she named her publishing company after it.