Archive for the tag "alternative press"

Some of 1998’s best albums have been made by indie-rockers lifting a glass to the end of irony.  Call it a longing for honest emotion, for music that’s simply beautiful and emotionally moving.  Indeed, powerful albums this year from Cat Power, Elliott Smith, David Gedge’s Cinerama, Mike Johnson and Richard Davies, not to mention the Elvis Costello - Burt Bacharach collaboration, may someday make the late ’90s seem as halcyon an era for sophisticated singer-songwriter stylings as the early ’70s seem, retrospectively, with Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.  Add another name to that list, as well — country-tinged Chicago chanteuse Edith Frost, whose second full-length, Telescopic, far surpasses her first-rate debut, Calling Over Time.

There’s an Edith Frost in your town. Probably more than one. You know, she’s that boho folkie who’s always strumming her guitar shyly in the corner, singing quietly into the hair dangling limply in front of her face. She sounds pretty good if you don’t pay attention. Problem is, when you actually do listen, there’s not much going on.