A review by J Neo Marvin that appeared in the March 1999 issue of Puncture…

Somewhere between a more well-adjusted Chan Marshall and a shyer Mary Timony, Edith Frost’s voice has a ghostly quality all its own.  Floating wispily above a lazy, strummy backing, the voice at first listen sounds so subdued it’s barely there at all.  Listen again and you realize that wan whisper you took for granted is skillfully navigating some amazingly improbable melody lines, meanwhile creating a subtly powerful, seductive atmosphere.

"Bluish Bells" in particular is one of the most captivatingly peculiar songs I’ve heard in a while, a half-asleep shuffle laced with Beach Boys-like "festive sleigh bell" keyboards and incongruous gobs of fuzz guitar, topped with an utterly alien melody like a country ballad run backwards.  It may well be just that: Ray Davies and David Bowie used to reverse old songs to create new ones all the time, and even Johnny Cash recently revealed that "I Walk The Line" came about that way.*

Then again, it may just be the way Edith Frost hears things; these songs follow their own skewed logic in which notes and chords rarely fall exactly where you expect them to, instead hanging in the air for a tantalizing moment before they resolve.  There’s a tinge of country here, not to mention touches of the introverted side of psychedelia (Syd Barrett, Skip Spence, etc.), and even a bit of cabaret (listen to the loopy, lilting "You Belong To No One"… add some tubas and it wouldn’t be out of place in a Brecht/Weill musical).  But mostly I hear quietly twisted, lonesome ballads from an idiosyncratic new songwriter who is building a body of work with a who’s-who of the indie avant-garde for support.  (Her last album featured both Gastr del Sol and Sean O’Hagan; the new one is produced by Royal Trux under their "Adam & Eve" pseudonym, and elements of their own muddy haze creep in here.)  Low-key, mysterious music for those moments when you wake up in the middle of the night feeling inexplicably strange.

* Note from Edith:  J, you’re so smart.  I don’t want to give away all my secrets, but I will admit that "Bluish Bells" is exactly what you said, an old country song run backwards.  I guess it’s pretty obvious.  It’s a backwards version of a Bonnie Guitar version of "I’ve Just Destroyed The World", which according to the BMI database was written by Willie Nelson and Ray Price.  I even got most of the lyrics that way; for example "one fellow shy" (from Bluish Bells) is "I should have known" (from I’ve Just Destroyed…) sung backwards, more or less.