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.

Below Freezing
Edith Frost creates music that fits the season perfectly.

Chicago-based singer-songwriter Edith Frost designs corporate Web pages by day, and on her personal site (accessible at edithfrost.com), her expertise shows. A carefully organized guide to Frost’s discography, tour dates and press bites, the destination includes a gazillion links to locales ranging from the Schwa Corporation to the Stick Figure Death Theatre. Such connections are grouped into utilitarian rubrics such as “Timewasters,” a category that includes the subheadings "Artiness" and "Weirdness."

Edith Frost: Getting Warmer

"I’ve been saying it from day one and I’m still saying it: I just don’t want to ever have anything to do with the big corporate music scene."

Edith Frost is an unusual, low-key neo-folk artist known for stark, chilly songs that possess an honesty and directness which somehow makes their aloofness endearing.  A bare-bones, self-titled EP from 1996 introduced Frost’s unique talents, and her full-length followup, 1997′s Calling Over Time, featured such guests as Sean O’Hagan from the High Llamas, as well as an almost Nick Drake-like melancholy.  The new, country-tinged Telescopic is more musically lush and slightly more upbeat, albeit with Frost’s trademark poor-me lyrics.  Frost recently spoke to The Onion about depression, Jewel, high school, and her cat.

Cool Country Air: Chicago invigorates Edith Frost’s spare, moody music

Edith Frost isn’t feeling her best.  Nobly, she engages me in charming discourse for an hour, despite the cold she’s recovering from.  She shouldn’t be smoking, either, but that doesn’t keep her from indulging in a few cigarettes as we chat.

Outside her boyfriend’s Chicago apartment, it’s a typical subzero blustery winter day.

When FROST melts, she writes about it

It’s not hard to get singer-guitarist Edith Frost to talk about her personal life.  She freely discusses the divorce and the short-lived relationship that made her life so difficult that she moved from New York to Chicago.

On her self-designed Web site, she actually had to discontinue her diary entries because she was including too many details from her everyday life, writing explicitly about her friends and her dreams in order to create a "virtual Edith."

Permanent Frost: Lo-Fi country charmer, sans blue mohawk, comes home

Singer/songwriter Edith Frost has come a long way since the early ’80s when she wore a blue mohawk and worked behind the counter of Austin’s favorite headshop, Oat Willie’s.

Just looking at her, one would never guess the girl with the thin frame, wispy brown hair and sweet-as-honey voice could rock a punk haircut, much less a punk-’n'-roll club like Emo’s.

Edith Frost, Lullaby for the Working Class, Knife in the Water
Emo’s, Saturday 23

Rooted somewhere in the Midwest, there’s a vast family tree growing from the mulch of Nineties indie rock.  Its branches are surnamed experimental, post-rock, shoegazer, and otherwise pruned-down sparse-rock too young to be named, composed of the members of Tortoise, Gastr del Sol, Palace, and a gazillion others.  Recently alit on its gnarled, inbred branches is Chicago songbird Edith Frost, who can’t believe how her former nest of Austin, which she left early this decade, has grown.  Her openness and excitement about this and every topic belies the often turbid waters of her musical gene pool.

No Love Lost: Misfortune doesn’t hinder Edith Frost

Lately, wherever Edith Frost needs to be, she’s had to contend with inconvenient situations.  In the days prior to this interview, the native Texan and Chicago transplant has been bypassed by overstuffed trains, missed plane flights, caught the flu, and slept in the airport.  It’s the "can’t win for losing" fate that makes potential fodder for a country song.

If Patsy Cline had lived longer, it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine her today, trading nights of sumptuous standards with Bobby Short at New York’s elegant Carlyle Hotel.  As recently released live recordings of Cline have revealed, despite her hard life and hard living, she was less a hardcore honkytonk gal than a wondrous pop stylist.

Chicago chanteuse Edith Frost gets colored with the country brush as well, and the sad songs and influx of steel guitar on her gorgeous new album Telescopic (Drag City) probably won’t help dispel such typecasting.

The Ice Queen Melteth
With a hand from Royal Trux, Edith Frost comes in colors

Edith Frost is boy crazy. And she makes no attempt to hide it. "Oh my god!" she groans over the phone from Chicago. "It’s bad! It’s so awful! I’m soooo on the prowl! I’m desperate!" Check out her online diary (edithfrost.com) and the recent entry which stands out most is the one that reads, "Wow, a whole day without getting a crush on somebody."

Delicate Frost

Rising talent Edith Frost has traveled a winding path — Chicago by way of New York by way of Texas — to bring to us her latest offering, Telescopic (Drag City).  The 34-year-old singer/songwriter’s second full-length, following last year’s Calling Over Time, raises the volume knob a few decibels, but retains the melancholy warmth and sadness of her previous work.

The Big Interview: Edith Frost

You have to like a singer who lists both good and bad reviews of her own music on her self-designed web site (at http://edithfrost.com/).  At least I have to, anyway; It’s very charming, after all.  Singer/songwriter Edith Frost is one of the several left-of-center acts on Chicago’s ueber-label Drag City Records.  I first encountered her in the pages of "Puncture" magazine while visiting my parents over Thanksgiving weekend last year.  Trapped as I was in rural (read: out-of-touch and boring) America, I had to wait until I was home in Boston before I could track down her debut, full-length release, Calling Over Time.  I was quickly won over to her melancholy, Twin Peaks-like, country torch singer-ish style.  Almost a year after that introduction Frost has another release: Telescopic.  This time around she’s added some fuzzy psychedelia to her hodge-podge sound and I’m still smitten.  She’ll be at T.T. The Bear’s in Cambridge on Saturday, November 7 with Sam Prekop (of The Sea and Cake and Shrimpboat) and Archer Prewitt (also of The Sea and Cake, as well as super-fun retro before retro was the thing band, The Coctails).

A multicolored Frost
Drag City songstress plays Empty Bottle and Goose Fest

Whether you interviewed Edith Frost for a half-hour, two hours or even 10 hours, you’d come away with few notes. Most people don’t take notes when talking to their friends, and Frost is so easygoing and candid and so immediately familiar that scribing most of what she says would seem a violation of friendship. Then you remember there is no friendship — you’re working here — so you’d best start writing something.

Blabbing with Edith Frost
LIKE A COWGIRL AT THE 7-11 OR SOMETHING: DEAD ANGEL RIDES THE RANGE WITH EDITH FROST

Edith Frost is currently a big deal, almost by accident really, but deservedly so. Her unique, lonesome brand of ambient folk has caught the ear of numerous critics, nearly all of whom have gone bananas over her in the past year or so, and of Drag City, who have sensibly started making her sounds available to the vast buying public (in other words, you and me). She recently followed her debut American full-length release, CALLING OVER TIME, with a rambling tour of the U.S. (i saw her; she was great; if you missed it, too bad for you) and stands to release a new album, TELESCOPIC, on Drag City in October. For more info, we must go to the cowgal herself….