Frost has had other boyfriends, lots of would-be boyfriends, one husband and plenty of songs in her life in the two decades since then. Many of them have found their way into the records she’s made for local independent label Drag City, including last year’s "Wonder Wonder."

There are songs like "Blue," which find a devastated Frost quietly recalling "the night you told me you could never love me," and songs like "Easy to Love," that find her delighting at finding "the lover that I’ve always dreamed of."

"It’s honest. I’m in love with this guy that I’m with, and it’s a love song for him," Frost says. The security she’s gotten out of her current three-year relationship has reduced the anxiety that made its way into songs like "Hear My Heart" (in which she sings "you don’t even know me hardly at all/and the chance is incredibly small").

"I would get crushes on people really easy," Frost explains. "I had to differentiate between what’s a crush and what’s actually going to work. It was so messing with my life not to have a stable relationship. It was heart-wrenching all the time."

With her love life on solid ground, Frost has begun expanding her songs to include new topics and new song forms. She points to "Cars and Parties," an examination of geographic and emotional rootlessness set to a parade march beat. "I’m really proud of that one. It turned into a really solid pop rock song."

The music variety of "Wonder Wonder" extends to the organ-driven "The Fear"; piano-based chamber-folk songs like "Merry Go Round"; and the fiddle-fueled trot "Further." The last song is one of the reasons Frost has been tagged as part of the alternative country scene, but she chafes at labeling herself.

"I can’t and I won’t. I refuse," she says with one of her frequent chuckles. "I try to do something that sounds cool. It’s a little rock, a little country, a little blues, a little psychedelic."

Frost’s soft, low singing adds to the record’s confessional mood. "I like playing around with vocals. The songs I’d done used my middle register and upper register a lot, and I wanted to do more low stuff."

Members of Wilco, Poi Dog Pondering, the Sea and Cake, and Eleventh Dream Day all contribute to "Wonder Wonder," a demonstration of the communal nature of the music scene Frost joined when the Texas native moved here from New York in 1996 after splitting up with her husband.

"It’s really fun to move because you’re kind of wiping the slate clean and you’re starting a whole new life," she reflects. "In a way it really wrecks your whole life but in another way there can be a rebirth too if you work it right. Chicago was such a good move for me."

McKeough is a Chicago freelance writer.

Fleshing out her delicate folk-pop with hints of electronic atmosphere, Frost is Chicago’s answer to Beth Orton and Lida Husik.  She sings carefully chosen words about broken relationships in a dreamy voice, leaving clean incisions that may require stitches weeks after they’re first heard.

Edith Frost’s fine debut record unveiled a folksy singer/songwriter whose introspective music deftly waltzed along the country- pop borderline, but her new effort, Telescopic, tentatively explores the art-sploitation ethos of Chicago’s Wicker Park underground. A mix of clean C&W hickory and piquant avant-rock fuzz, Telescopic is an engaging, if less immediate, record that suffers only from its static mood and pacing.

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.

Fortunately, there’s plenty to write about Frost, a 34-year-old singer/songwriter whose music falls somewhere between rock, country and lounge.  There’s her largely lauded debut album from last year, Calling Over Time, a beautiful, stark and lonely 45 minutes.  Or her second album, Transcopic, (Note from Edith: That’s TELEscopic!! Jeez!!!) which will be released in October and takes an admirable step in a new direction.  Or even something non-musical, like her place in her family: Her father is an "investor guy" who is so successful that he’s able to spend half the year working out of a recreational vehicle touring the country.  Her sister is a lawyer.  Frost lives hand-to-mouth and was recently booted from an apartment for the second time this year because her landlord wanted to renovate.

"I’m the one deadbeat in the family," said the Texas native.  "My dad’s really good with money. I wish I had some of that."

What she does have is a contract with the local Drag City label, which she signed two years ago after sending unsolicited demos recorded at home in Brooklyn — just her, a guitar and her songs.  The package was impressive enough to not only sign Frost, but release four of those songs as a self-titled EP.  She moved to Chicago ready to record an album, and tried the same minimalist approach.  The label, she said, was "underwhelmed."  To flesh out the sound, it teamed her with members of fellow Drag City band Gastr del Sol.  It worked.  Bits of slide guitar and fiddle and soft, winding guitar solos made Calling Over Time a hit with both critics and the public.  It sold about 7,000 copies, quite respectable for an indie debut.

"The first record is amazing," she said.  "I haven’t listened to it cover to cover in a really long time, but it sounds really pretty — stark.  That thing was a gem."

To the credit of both Frost and her label, neither wanted to try to repeat the formula.  Drag City sent her in a new direction: east, to Virginia, to record in a new studio with new producer (Neil Hagerty, formerly of Royal Trux) and a new band.  It was Drag City honcho Dan Koretzky who suggested Frost work with Hagerty.

"I was like, ‘Are you crazy?  What the f***?  How does that relate to my music?’" she said.  "But that was my same reaction with the Gastr guys."

Transcopic almost sounds as if it came from a different artist.  Like Calling Over Time it’s pulse doesn’t much rise above a murmur, but Frost has found her electric guitar — literally. For either her 16th birthday or high school graduation (she can’t remember which) she was given a baby blue Stratocaster, which she never picked up until just recently.  She now plays it almost exclusively.  It was Rian Murphy, producer of Calling Over Time and drummer for Transcopic who best summed up the difference between the albums.

"He said Calling Over Time was shades of blue," Frost said, "and this one is all colors."

Noel is a Chicago freelance writer and regular contributor to Reverb.