<…> Frost’s solo acoustic set applied her signature drawling, bass-heavy strumming and cliff-dangling vocals to covers of songs recorded mostly by country women: Janis Martin, Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, the Maddox Brothers & Rose, and Patsy Montana.  Amid the inevitably informal setting that included a six-foot stuffed blue marlin as the backdrop, an ancient red replica of a persian rug as the dance floor, and the owners’ golden retriever cruising for pats on the head, Frost decorated her occasional goof-ups with the sort of giggles common among family and friends.  <…>

"Stop what you’re doin’/ ‘Cause I’m about to ruin/ The image and the style that you’re used to." That’s not how Edith Frost’s Telescopic kicks off; it’s the first line from the Digital Underground’s "Humpty Dance." But wouldn’t it be something to hear Frost get dirty on the mike?

Edith Frost dips into fuzz-drenched folk on ‘Telescopic’

From her last name, you’d expect Edith Frost to be an ice queen supreme and in a way she is.  Her whispery, removed vocals make her sound like fine china — any sudden chink in the music and she’d shatter.

But Frost is more delicate than dangerous.  The damaged love songs that make up her second album "Telescopic" (Drag City) are orchestrated so minimally they’re like a 40-minute session in hypnosis.  When she sings, "you hold me / underneath your spell" (on "Walk On The Fire"), she’s not kidding.

Call Edith Frost the crossover cowgirl, the alterna-country singer who discovered the fuzz pedal.  On Telescopic, her newest Drag City release, she treads the familiar lyrical ground of lost love (so confessional an artist that she has posted diary entries on her web site) but with unexpectedly psychedelic sonic textures, with not just guitar but violin, accordion and singing saw.^*  Her roots are as much in Royal Trux as in Hank and Patsy.  The reflectiveness isn’t diluted, however, by the added dimension.  Her music is so personal that this new genre she’s almost single-handedly invented doesn’t sound alien at all.

In Calling Over Time, Edith Frost and a crew of Drag City all-stars built a lovely, melancholic mood, with David (Gastr del Sol) Grubbs’ piano and organ inserting unsettling chords into low-key country arrangements.  But on Telescopic, Frost’s new Drag City release, a new cast of musicians gave her an almost prog-rock backing, while her vocals, so clear and cold on the first LP, are multi-tracked, burying their distinctive tone under studio frippery.  Looks like she’s building a career along the lines set out by labelmate Will Oldham, whose successive albums and tours are perversely inconsistent, marked by changing sidemen and changing arrangements for no clear purpose other than change itself.  Which is to say, who knows which Edith Frost will appear at this show?  She’s playing with Lullaby for the Working Class and Jana McCall, who went a bit Pink Floyd-y herself on her Up Records debut, so we could be in for the wrong kind of retro-’70s night.

Sat Feb 6 at the Breakroom.

One listen to Edith Frost’s latest album, Telescopic (Drag City), makes it obvious why the label turned a demo she sent them in 1994 into an EP almost immediately.  Despite her affiliation with one of the hippest indie labels, Frost lacks pretension.  Like labelmate Will Oldham, Frost draws on traditions of country and folk, incorporating them into her own quirky style to great effect.  Frost’s recorded vocals are more akin to a smoother Liz Phair than to Billie Holiday, with whom she has been compared.  Perhaps it’s due to the electric (and often ethereal) approach on her albums, thanks in part to recording help from Chicago contemporaries Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs of Gastr del Sol and Tsunami’s Amy Domingues.  The live version is more sparse.  Frost conveys beauty and genuine longing in heartfelt — but never clichéd — tunes with surprising ease.  Lucky for us, she’s finally touring out West.

With her forbidding, Victorian-sounding name and haunting songs, it’s tempting to romanticize Drag City songstress Edith Frost as some sort of distant, enigmatic poet; yet a visit to her homemade webpage reveals a warm, disarming person who really wants to share her songs with the public. Regardless of her ersonality, she continues to weave an enchanting musical tapestry with her latest album, Telescopic.

Stage Show:  Singer-songwriter Edith Frost can express a delicate innocence on stage, then surprise her audience with an exciting charge of emotion-provoking tunes.
Recordings:  Calling Over Time, Frost’s first release in 1997, had a folksy feel.  Today, however, she has made a ferocious turn and opened up a new sound on her latest album, Telescopic.
Did you know?:  Frost’s demo tape was found at the bottom of a "for review" bin and was immediately signed by Drag City Records after they heard her unusual style.
Our take:  Frost has the ability to transform herself and her music into various styles and sounds, which is sure to keep an audience captive.

This highly lauded singer/songwriter, based out of Chicago, has just released her second full-length album, Telescopic, on the Drag City imprint.  While the disc hangs onto a certain affinity for country that her 1997 debut Calling Over Time explored, Telescopic gives equal weight to the acoustic indie-pop and vocals retaining the Kristin Hersh-meets-Liz Phair-meets-Carla Bozulich-and-Emmylou Harris simplicity that perked up ears initially.

There’s a tough guy of my acquaintance — stoic, brass-knuckled, up every morning at the crack of dawn to tear the heads off the day — who’s front and center every time Edith Frost comes to town,¹ yelling "Do the one that makes me cry, Edith!" He doesn’t even have a particular song in mind; pretty much anything in her repertoire will do the trick. Which perhaps proves the timeworn adage that tough guys are the people most likely to get all placid and teary-eyed at slow, sentimental songs — Frost’s speciality, and one she does rather well.

Based on the evidence presented on her latest Drag City record, Telescopic (produced by Dagwood and Blondie of Royal Trux), Chicago lass Edith Frost could well be a refreshingly unconventional star on the rise in the ever-expanding world of the heart-scorched singer/songwriter.  Frost’s songs are always an intriguing puzzle; never giving into just one measly emotion, her deceptively pointed words and pillowy voice reflect a mercurial mood at work, often in the same verse.

This time around, the instruments come and go in the background until the cello and guitar and organ have become a single, stringent sound — this is the stuff of deep fuzz, roots gone psychedelic like a reverie half-remembered or a wish half-fulfilled. Edith Frost — among the rare women to shake, rattle, and roll around with the noodling indie boys in that Guysville (sic) known as Chicago — has come a long way indeed since her earliest recordings, back when she was content to play cowgirl dress-up and sing campfire songs tucked away safe and quiet in her bedroom.

NYC’s Edith Frost’s story has "indie-legend-in-the-making" written all over it. In 1994 she sends a demo tape to Chicago label, Drag City. A year later, it is discovered at the bottom of the "for review" bin and is immediately released as an EP. In 1996 she hits the studio with a cred-heavy band that includes Gastr Del Sol’s David Grubbs and High Llama Sean O’Hagan and produces the much-lauded, country-tinged Calling Over Time. Her new album, Telescopic, finds Frost leaving her past behind for more distorted and experimental territory. She plays Denton’s Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio on Sunday.

After Beck made it OK both for geeks to rock and for them to do so using acoustic guitars, the world has seen the rise of countless "acoustic-indie" artists.  Some of them are pretty good, others are simply strategists.  Chicago’s Edith Frost is neither.  Since the 1998 release of Calling Over Time (Drag City), [and] a four-song EP culled from her vast self-recorded demo cassette collection, Frost has been the talk of the indie scene — think Mary Lou Lord or Beth Orton minus the hype.  And it’s not just because she’s clever with an acoustic guitar and has the ability to wring out a good lyric or two.  The 31-year-old Frost sounds as inspired as Patsy Cline at the Grand Ole Opry, and her odd-metered acoustic guitar-based songs are thick with the twangy stuff of dead country legends.  But she’s not simply the country-folk singer much of the press she’s received might have you believe.

What we have here is a beautiful album that I’ve enjoyed more with each listen.  At a time when there are more than several bands working with a sound that’s a little bit country and a little bit indie rock, Frost is definitely one of the best songwriters in the bunch.