When singer Edith Frost left Austin, Texas to live in Brooklyn she brought with her a set of great songs, and her beautiful soprano and a guitar to gently strum. Frost has the hip, home-recorded credibility of Mary Lou Lord, and the gorgeous southern twang of Crowsdell or Mazzy Star. Her songwriting is like fairy tales, intensely spiritual, almost devotional, such as where she lilts "Evangeline sings to the gods above and all of the strangers turn into angels." The loss in sound quality is made up for by the delightful melodies. She double-tracked her voice to harmonize with herself, which gives the recording a multi-layered depth. Drag City fell in love with the tape and chose these tracks, as they found them, to release. If you like the authentic sounds of home recording and a dulcet Southern soprano, Edith Frost has four exquisite songs to offer.

<…> Edith Frost was first up, and they did some mildly swaying plaintive ballads.  I almost started to cry again.  There were six people up on stage, but I’m not sure what they were all doing.  Edith led the gang though some vaguely alternative country tunes, occasionally turning around and pulling guitarist Jim O’Rourke’s chin up so he wouldn’t make an imprint on his chest.  I didn’t mind.  Edith seemed like a nice lady.  <…>

Painterly songs delivered in a variety of chamber-pop settings by an admirably restrained singer. Frost’s characters don’t demand much — "I don’t want to be too happy / Just enough to tide me over" — but their commonplace lives, shadowed by doubt and quiet desperation, are gracefully illuminated.

<…> Edith Frost, a transplanted Texan now living in Chicago, was a delightful opening act who moved the crowd with her strong vocals and simple guitar playing. Backed up only by an electric bass player, Frost sang beautiful, quirky songs with titles like "Blame You" and "Secrets," about love both found and misplaced.

<…> Recording under her own name, an indie heresy, Frost is perfectly at ease with her gentle strum, clear voice (more Emmylou Harris clarity than Lilith Fair acrobatic), and modest, country-inflected songs. Frost’s earthy sentiments — "Ahh… we’ll snort with pleasure/Ahh… we’ll forego washing" — are not those of the ice-maiden producer Rian Murphy sometimes seems to want her to portray, though David Grubbs’s piano on "Follow" and the harmonium and cymbals of "Denied" have their own sonic appeal. (Reportedly, her current touring band plays these songs markedly differently.)

Edith Frost has a mesmerising, ghostly presence. Her voice is fragile and sickly — it feels at first a bit like a cold hand on your shoulder. It’s funny that she should be singing about ancestors, because she has a voice from the past, a gentle, curious oddity from another time and culture. Sometimes she sounds like the memory of a century old Sioux spreading terrible wisdoms. Sometimes she sounds like the madwoman in the attic. Actually, she’s probably a wee woman from Partick who runs a laundrette, but then music is alchemy, isn’t it?

The timbre of Frost’s voice holds its own with Margo Timmins of Cowboy Junkies, Liz Phair and Barbara Manning. The lonely desperation and emotional struggles of the lyrics make Frost a peer of Lisa Germano. The murky, acoustic production suits Frost’s songs and voice. So why doesn’t Calling Over Time work the way a Lisa Germano or Liz Phair record works? Because it’s too quiet, the songs lack strong melodies or structure, and the whole thing just sounds too damn dreary and offhand. Or maybe not dreary enough: This music, at worst, sounds merely dim, not truly dark. Only on the solid final cut, "Albany Blues," (vaguely reminiscent of Bobby "Blue" Bland’s version of "St. James Infirmary"), does Frost break out of her mildly downcast mode and launch into something more direct and memorable.

Edith Frost will never in a billion years hear her songs played on mainstream country radio, but listen to her recent Calling Over Time, and you’ll hear some of the most emotionally honest country-influenced music around. Spare and simple, with no insipid cornpone to dumb things down, her songs are what the genre should aspire to be.

Save for her gender and melancholy, the 31-year-old Edith Frost doesn’t have much in common with the doe-eyed celebrations of womanhood currently basking in the glow of media adoration. Even though Frost’s achingly beautiful debut album, Calling Over Time, is an exercise in heartbreak, it’s remarkable for the fact that it never once manages to trip the treacle-detector.

A reputable indie label (Drag City) isn’t the only thing that Edith Frost shares with Palace’s Will Oldham. The singer/songwriter also delves deep into the soul for slow, beautiful country-blues based ballads which bend with, and shine for, all the weight of their introspection. Songs swirl gently into shape — massive hooks and novel refrains would prove unnecessary clutter here. Frost’s spare musical vision is executed with nothing on top but sensuous, eloquent lyrics. And her uniqueness lies in an ability to speak of a place that’s a little darker and deeper than the everyday, while still building her songs very much on the solid rock of the regular — on everyone’s experience of love, life and all the woes. (4 STARS)

Onetime rockabilly filly Edith Frost’s Calling Over Time (Drag City, ***1/2) is a willfully spare debut whose spartan soundscapes place the emphasis squarely on the calm strength of the artist’s liltingly melancholy compositions.

Daring performers offer fresher sound at New Music Fest

With alternative rock descending into ever-blander self-parody and indie rock mired in tired navel-gazing, perhaps now is a good time to take stock of where modern music is going. No matter what your taste in music — from noisy college radio to angry suburban whine of the Lollapalooza generation — it’s pretty apparent that rock is in dire need of a transfusion of energy and originality.

Edith Frost wins again with three more great songs, produced this time around by Kramer.  While Kramer adds some bass and synthesizers, most of these songs are reminiscent of Frost’s self titled EP, simply Frost with her guitar.

"Ancestors" is a dream-like pondering of reuniting with loved ones in heaven.  "Secrets" is a country ballad type song which is perfect for desert sunsets.  "Cold and On My Mind" opens with the line, "We’ll never know much about anything." This toe tappin’ ditty conjures many of the same images as "Secrets", only a bit more playful, leaving behind the words of the chorus, "We’ll never know where the summer goes."

These three new songs are available only as an import single, but they are certainly worth the extra cash you might have to pay for it.

Singer-guitarist Edith Frost has a beautiful voice that possesses the beauty of Emmylou Harris and the hushed melancholy of Cat Power’s Chan Marshall. Backed by Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo and Gastr del Sol’s Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs, Frost delivers one haunting country and blues-inflected ballad after another on her follow-up to last year’s self-titled four-song debut.