Archive for the tag "bad titles"

April 19 - Friday
Frost Bite
If you’re a fan of laid-back, melancholic country-style folk music, Chicago-based singer-songwriter Edith Frost is the gal for you. Sounding somewhat like indie vocalist Liz Phair, Frost — a devoted collector of cowgirl memorabilia — writes songs, most in a minor key, that examine love, especially disappointment in love. The gentle vocal phrasings on her third album, last year’s Wonder Wonder (Drag City), belie the frequent bitterness in her songs. In "Further" she sings, "Further down the ladder my brave fireman reaches out, he’s gonna drop me down and leave me further behind." Local indie trio the Court and Spark, Chicago band Central Falls, and Olympia’s Sarah Dougher also play.
9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $10. (415) 621-4455.

Chillin’ With Edith Frost

I’ve had this Edith Frost song in my head all day. It’s called "Cars and Parties" and it goes something like this: "Everyone around here reminds me of someone down in Texas and every strip-mall on the highway reminds me of my home…" In her classically Frost-like nonchalance, Edith’s voice rolls through the tune like she’s rolling smoothly down a hill only to fly off a sharp dip throughout her course (hey, she’s gotta let you know just how uncool or mal-adjusted she really is). Edith Frost is the kind of singer you can relax in the tub to while sipping hot cider and rum, eating Godiva’s, closing your eyes, and remembering how sucky and wonderful love can be while fighting back the tingling tears in your gut. Her voice is deep and gentle like a little kid’s sincerest belly laugh. Her lyrics are deceptively simple, endearing, and extremely catchy.

Chill factor: Windy City singer-songwriter Edith Frost nips at our ears and hearts with two new albums

Her voice overflows with an earthy sweetness one typically encounters on dusty country records, yet singer-songwriter Edith Frost ignores distinctions between old and new, city and country, art and kitsch. Her Chicago apartment is loaded with Hello Kitty tchotchkes and cowgirl memorabilia; 15 feet of vinyl eat away at her living room while her hard drive swells with MP3 files. She bought her first modem in 1982, launched her first website in 1994 (it was devoted to cowgirls) and currently maintains a site about her music so thorough that it lists crummy reviews alongside raves and even highlights the portions of her interviews that she deems most embarrassing.

Frost’s Bite

Speaking on the phone with singer and songwriter Edith Frost is a life-affirming experience. Her voice has an infectious, inherent enthusiasm, an irrepressible energy, and her conversation is punctuated with both quiet little asides to herself and deep, rapid bursts of laughter that betray a joy, a literal giddiness, about her work.

Killer Frost

Edith Frost’s face is open as a full moon, with round gray-blue eyes and half-curly bangs exactly like the ones she had as a kid.  Don’t be fooled.  The country Midwestern crooner may say things such as "I’ve always been just my guitar and voice.  I’m lucky if I have the skills to put it on a crappy four-track cassette."  But she’s not as guileless as all that.

Below Freezing
Edith Frost creates music that fits the season perfectly.

Chicago-based singer-songwriter Edith Frost designs corporate Web pages by day, and on her personal site (accessible at edithfrost.com), her expertise shows. A carefully organized guide to Frost’s discography, tour dates and press bites, the destination includes a gazillion links to locales ranging from the Schwa Corporation to the Stick Figure Death Theatre. Such connections are grouped into utilitarian rubrics such as “Timewasters,” a category that includes the subheadings "Artiness" and "Weirdness."

Edith Frost: Getting Warmer

"I’ve been saying it from day one and I’m still saying it: I just don’t want to ever have anything to do with the big corporate music scene."

Edith Frost is an unusual, low-key neo-folk artist known for stark, chilly songs that possess an honesty and directness which somehow makes their aloofness endearing.  A bare-bones, self-titled EP from 1996 introduced Frost’s unique talents, and her full-length followup, 1997’s Calling Over Time, featured such guests as Sean O’Hagan from the High Llamas, as well as an almost Nick Drake-like melancholy.  The new, country-tinged Telescopic is more musically lush and slightly more upbeat, albeit with Frost’s trademark poor-me lyrics.  Frost recently spoke to The Onion about depression, Jewel, high school, and her cat.

Cool Country Air: Chicago invigorates Edith Frost’s spare, moody music

Edith Frost isn’t feeling her best.  Nobly, she engages me in charming discourse for an hour, despite the cold she’s recovering from.  She shouldn’t be smoking, either, but that doesn’t keep her from indulging in a few cigarettes as we chat.

Outside her boyfriend’s Chicago apartment, it’s a typical subzero blustery winter day.

When FROST melts, she writes about it

It’s not hard to get singer-guitarist Edith Frost to talk about her personal life.  She freely discusses the divorce and the short-lived relationship that made her life so difficult that she moved from New York to Chicago.

On her self-designed Web site, she actually had to discontinue her diary entries because she was including too many details from her everyday life, writing explicitly about her friends and her dreams in order to create a "virtual Edith."

Permanent Frost: Lo-Fi country charmer, sans blue mohawk, comes home

Singer/songwriter Edith Frost has come a long way since the early ’80s when she wore a blue mohawk and worked behind the counter of Austin’s favorite headshop, Oat Willie’s.

Just looking at her, one would never guess the girl with the thin frame, wispy brown hair and sweet-as-honey voice could rock a punk haircut, much less a punk-’n'-roll club like Emo’s.

If Patsy Cline had lived longer, it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine her today, trading nights of sumptuous standards with Bobby Short at New York’s elegant Carlyle Hotel.  As recently released live recordings of Cline have revealed, despite her hard life and hard living, she was less a hardcore honkytonk gal than a wondrous pop stylist.

Chicago chanteuse Edith Frost gets colored with the country brush as well, and the sad songs and influx of steel guitar on her gorgeous new album Telescopic (Drag City) probably won’t help dispel such typecasting.

The Ice Queen Melteth
With a hand from Royal Trux, Edith Frost comes in colors

Edith Frost is boy crazy. And she makes no attempt to hide it. "Oh my god!" she groans over the phone from Chicago. "It’s bad! It’s so awful! I’m soooo on the prowl! I’m desperate!" Check out her online diary (edithfrost.com) and the recent entry which stands out most is the one that reads, "Wow, a whole day without getting a crush on somebody."

Delicate Frost

Rising talent Edith Frost has traveled a winding path — Chicago by way of New York by way of Texas — to bring to us her latest offering, Telescopic (Drag City).  The 34-year-old singer/songwriter’s second full-length, following last year’s Calling Over Time, raises the volume knob a few decibels, but retains the melancholy warmth and sadness of her previous work.

A multicolored Frost
Drag City songstress plays Empty Bottle and Goose Fest

Whether you interviewed Edith Frost for a half-hour, two hours or even 10 hours, you’d come away with few notes. Most people don’t take notes when talking to their friends, and Frost is so easygoing and candid and so immediately familiar that scribing most of what she says would seem a violation of friendship. Then you remember there is no friendship — you’re working here — so you’d best start writing something.