Puncture interview

edith frost: shivers down your spine
Born of some holy communion between singer-songwriter psychedelia and spooky country blues, Edith Frost’s songs stir up serious longings. And Bob Pomeroy responds

On "Calling Over Time," the title track of her first album, Edith Frost sings a kind of epilogue to the chorus that repeats the phrase "loving hands turn burning sand to water." The notes she sings tumble down a minor scale on a prolonged fall from the upper reaches of the thin, narcotic atmosphere that the song, as a whole, generates. (In fact, the entire record, except for one or two more wide-awake numbers, flows like a dream.)

One of the most striking things about Calling Over Time is its display of this singer-songwriter’s gift for subtle, delicate melody. Whether drifting and levitating through regions of folkie-psychedelia (comparisons to Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, and Kendra Smith are not far-fetched) or recalling a more straightforward roots flavor, the melodies seem to build from spare, vaguely countrified chord progressions that lope along the ground like some lonesome cowgirl’s pony. Despite the stylistic possibilities and emotional range this quiet record realizes, a certain thread runs through all but a couple of songs (such as "Denied," whose hallucinatory melody travels light years away from anything you could hope to call "roots").

If the overall feel of Calling Over Time were a line I could grasp and follow, my hunch is the line would lead me to that cowgirl’s pony.

But "I’m really not shooting to sound like country," Edith Frost announces over the phone from Chicago. Twenty minutes into our interview and my theory already has a crack in it.

Considering her background in old-timey country and rockabilly outfits such as the Holler Sisters, the Marfa Lights, and Edith’s Roadhouse Romeos, as well as the lingering roots flavor of her recent solo material, I thought I’d found enough of an element running through Edith Frost’s life and career to see the Austin, Texas native as some sort of alt-country singer. Yet the longer we speak, the more my thread frays.

"If I sound like country," she says, "it’s probably because that’s what I can play."

The bio on Frost’s web-site does claim she knows the words to "a couple hundred rockabilly and old-timey country tunes"; and she’s a fan of such obscure performers as ’30s country band the Coon Creek Girls, or ’50s session player and solo artist Bonnie Guitar. How does this affect her own material?

"I’m not sure how much of an effect playing those old tunes has on my originals." Hesitating, she adds, "I’m not sure where those come from".

"I play the old stuff because I love it, and also for the exercise. I try to sing every day to keep my chops up… and because it’s fun."

Our talk meanders on about country music and Frost’s favorites in that realm. She leads the way on a well-charted path through the great traditional storehouse, while I dig for insight into her influences. "Fifties-style rockabilly," her list begins. "I also love really old-timey. Once they hit the ’60s, I kind of lose interest. There’s hardly any new Nashville music I can tolerate. There’s stuff on the outskirts that’s totally country, that the Nashville labels don’t embrace."

Listen to any of Edith Frost’s releases — the "Evangeline" EP and Calling Over Time LP on Drag City, or the UK import EP Ancestors (Trade2) — and it quickly becomes obvious that the phrase "totally country" doesn’t describe them. Yet often enough there appear in her songs (which are usually in a minor key) spare chord progressions lilting along in waltz time, Frost-on-Frost overdubbed vocal harmonies (an old production trick that was used and reused by Patsy Cline), even pedal steel and fiddle licks. So while the records are not country in any essential sense, they wouldn’t be out of place on that music’s far outskirts.

Loading my stereo, I alternate a few of her country-tinged songs with some of Hank Williams’ more downbeat blues. "Temporary Loan," the first track on Calling Over Time, opens on a vaguely flat-picked chord progression before Frost begins moaning, in a typically delicate vocal melody, the lyrics "I get the blues most every night/and wait for the one I lost." The song segues nicely enough into Williams’ "(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle," or "Moanin’ the Blues." Frost’s "Secrets," from the Ancestors EP, gliding gracefully in that old waltz time, delivers the lines "I won’t think about those things any more/I’ll just bury them down under drifts of snow," settling well beside Hank’s "My Sweet Love Ain’t Around." Hank offers a more straightforward, palpable moan. His complaints on love and loss are usually built from major chords, sometimes lending a toe-tapping buoyancy to his sorrow. Frost’s airy "blues," if you will, are more atmospheric. Spare bass and guitar often fade into unobtrusive shadows while the subtle emotional power of her melodies leaves me uneasily alone with lines like "I’ll try to be satisfied," or "If we could clear the air/I’d be there tonight."

There’s a lot of longing in Calling Over Time, a desire to embrace love, happiness, ponies — things that remain elusive to the singer. "Would you say separation from longed-for things is a theme in Calling Over Time?" I try.

"That’s a big thing in my life," she laughs. "So it’s easy to write about. It’s like, if I’m not sitting at my computer, then I’m thinking about my love life."

Frost’s songs have a way of riding simple minor-chord progressions that at moments suggest a stripped-down Ennio Morricone soundtrack distilled to its basic possibilities, giving her vocal melodies room to roam. Despite the desolate atmosphere in some of the songs, I figure she’ll consider the spaghetti Western connection a bit of a stretch. Again she surprises me. "That’s cool," she beams, "that kind of spooky, cinematic music."

"What if someone wanted to use your songs for a Western soundtrack?"

"Oh, I’d love that!"

Where previous Edith Frost releases feature, for the most part, her own guitar-playing as the only accompaniment (Kramer provides a few basslines on Ancestors), Calling Over Time marks her first recording with a backing band.

And what a band — producer/drummer Rian Murphy (Palace, Royal Trux, Dolomite) arranged for Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs of Gastr del Sol, Rick Rizzo of Eleventh Dream Day, and Sean O’Hagan of the High Llamas to play a weeklong session in Chicago last September.

"Rian organized it all," Frost explains. "He was here in Chicago, I was in New York. I tried to do some stuff on my own, and at Kramer’s and Coyote studios, but I wasn’t getting the right feel, besides spending too much money. Rian said I could go to Chicago and we’d record it in a week. He said he could get Gastr to do it, and he’d try to get Rick Rizzo to play bass even though he isn’t a bass player — turned out he’s a great bass player, even though he’d never picked one up before."

The high-profile supporting musicians enhance Frost’s songcraft perfectly. Calling Over Time has the odd effect of making the songs sound more sparse and ethereal than those on "Evangeline", whose songs she recorded at home as part of a batch of demos. O’Rourke, Grubbs, Rizzo, and the rest fall in gently behind her, offering a strange, subdued blend of narco-psychedelia and minimalist roots. The multi-instrumental prowess at work here seems to function as subtle accenting for Frost’s sophisticated sense of melody.

"You’d never played with these guys before, right?"

"I hadn’t even met them before. We had a week to record, and I got there a day early to rehearse. It was so funny — we could tell it was going to be really cool, but I was intimidated: here’s these luminaries…. But they were totally nice, normal people… affable guys."

"You must have been a little surprised when you first heard the playback."

"Yeah." She still sounds amazed. "Especially with David’s piano. I’d never played with a pianist before; it just bowled me over. And when Jim played violin on ‘Temporary Loan,’ it was just so beautiful."

Calling Over Time may or may not take up even temporary residence in the regions of alt country. And rather than try to figure out what the genre is, I might do better, at this stage of the No Depression explosion, to determine what it’s not.

Even George Jones, when I saw him play recently, took every opportunity between songs to rail against contemporary Nashville. "You all know I’m old," he said. "I don’t go in for smoke machines or swinging around on ropes. I just ain’t up to it.

"Besides," he added, "to me that ain’t country."

The Possum’s impulse toward purity notwithstanding, if country music had been held to strict standards of purity, the Carter Family would never have groped their way out of the Virginia hills with their repertory of bastardized hillbilly ballads to create the style in the first place.

Such current rustic and/or pastoral indie entities as Palace, Freakwater, and Edith Frost are artists who to some degree exude traditional influence. But they also have the good sense not to attempt any "pure" replication of folk music. To hear Edith Frost describe it, whatever folk or C&W shadings one might hear in her music — and they’re there, all right — appear more by osmosis than deliberation. Frost has been quoted as saying, "If I was aiming for one sound, I wouldn’t get it… I don’t have the chops."

At any rate, our talk reveals that Edith Frost finds comparisons with Syd and Nick and Kendra more accurate than the country tag. "They’re probably more what I intend to sound like, rather than anything straight country.

"I don’t want anyone to peg the music as one style. If I could say what I really want to sound like, it would be spooky and drugged out and dreamy and hallucinogenic. I would love to be that way. I try."