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.

Edith Frost
Friday, April 26 @ Kilby Court, 741 S. 330 West, 320-9887, 8:30 p.m.

First off, no relation, OK? Edith Frost is a Texan via New York City and now Chicago, where she recorded Wonder Wonder (Drag City), a beautifully not-quite-country album that combines cowgirl longing and urban lust with stunning results — think Patsy Cline sharing a Lucky Strike with Liz Phair, among others. "I like it when people compare me to freaks like Syd Barrett," she says. "There are a lot of elements I want to put into my music that can’t be summed up by saying ‘country.’"

Edith Frost gives new hope for those seeking that kind of introspective, country-tinged singer-songwriter stuff but who’re bored to tears with the way it sounds. Over the course of a few generally excellent Drag City albums, Frost has taken the form and given it goose, working with your all-stars of the post-rock scene including Royal Trux, Gastr del Sol, Eleventh Dream Day and High Llamas, and with producer* Steve Albini on the recent WONDER WONDER. A singer of subtly ironic affect, Frost skews her downbeatish songs with unusual chord progressions and idiosyncratic instrumental touches like subdued keyboard shards or her favored jaunty clarinets, which lends an inviting ambiguity to the jaded tone she uses to convey her rather personal heartbreak stories.

Wednesday 4/17
Edith Frost, Carissa’s Wierd, Central Falls
(Graceland) Edith Frost’s debut, Calling Over Time, showcased her cool, clear take on Americana shaded with minor-key melodies reminiscent of an earthier mid-’70s Joni Mitchell. Its follow-up, Telescopic, was an atmospheric affair that displayed a bleary, introverted psychedelia similar to Syd Barrett and Skip Spence. With Wonder Wonder, Frost finds the balancing act between the sounds of those albums, more in league with her 1999 single Love Is Real. The dozen songs are subtly powerful, implying emotional depth rather than spelling it out. In person, Frost’s gossamer voice retains its otherworldliness; it’s alt-country from an alternate universe. She creates her own atmosphere with a sonic palette of skeletal arrangements that are the perfect bed for torchy balladeering.

April 12: Edith Frost w/ Central Falls
Café Montmartre, 9 p.m., $8
Much like Canadian singer Julie Doiron, Edith Frost coaxes beauty from sadness and longing. Although Frost’s music is often pegged as alt-country, her songs rarely muster up enough energy or twang to warrant the tag. She played with bar bands in her native Texas for years,* but didn’t find her true voice until she discovered Chicago’s underground-rock scene. Last year’s Wonder Wonder benefits greatly from those around her: Archer Prewitt and members of Wilco and Eleventh Dream Day help lay the foundation for Frost’s lovely, world-weary songs. Adam Vida, leader of opening act Central Falls, moonlights as the drummer for the insanely spastic No Wave band U.S. Maple. But Central Falls is everything Vida’s other gig isn’t: languid, pretty, tuneful, dreamy, and so on. Its new album is Latitude.

Edith Frost, with Central Falls
Wednesday, April 17 at Graceland, 8pm, 21+
The weather outside is becoming warmer, and the flowers will soon be blooming. Ah, spring, a time for frolicking, and being light and listening to happy music. One show that will definitely have heavy Springtime vibes will be Edith Frost at Graceland on April 17. Frost has that sort of indy-rock meets country feel, like Aimee Mann or even Kristen Hirsh. She is touring in support of her third album, Wonder Wonder, a record that was engineered by Steve Albini, and has been called "ambitious" and "strong" by critics. The songs from this album, along with many from her previous three, should make for a night of fun and springtime giddiness. Opening for Edith will be Central Falls, another band from Chicago, who have been described as "Acetone with twang." This show is the perfect event for this time of year, so dance around the puddles as you head on down to Graceland and get your life set for Spring!

Starts out all innocent and folky, building in intensity until the sweetness is cloaked in a medieval creepiness and starts sounding like the voices in a madwoman’s head. Ambling tunes reveal complex structures and compelling lyrics, with rather gorgeous results.

Forget pop stars and grab a helping of this woman’s pop gems.  Add a hint of country twang, some strings, and some help from Chicago’s most esteemed indie stars and you’ve got the makings of greatness.

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.

When I listen to her sing, "I wonder, wonder what I should do… I don’t know what to do about you…" in the clanky tune "Wonder Wonder" off her new album of the same title (on Drag City Records and engineered by the highly-acclaimed Steve Albini), I just can’t help but smile at the sheer buck nakedness of Frost’s twangy turmoil. On the phone Frost is nervous and charming, fast ("I’m pacing the floor," she says in her almost little-girl voice) and jumping from topic to topic with remarkable ease. Right away I can sense her inclination for self-deprecation which can also be noted on her website (edithfrost.com) where there’s hardly a picture of the girl alongside the info on her Wonder Wonder tour.¹ Frost is definitely not in the music biz because she likes the limelight and glittery facades that sweep along such divas as Gwen Stefani and Courtney Love. No, she’s just a girl with a guitar who has to write music because it’s her bliss and after listening to her sing "Don’t blow out the candle little girl" in "Further" it’s easy to see that Edith Frost is a girl who has no problem following it. - Sonia Pereira

First, I wanted to ask you about your new album, Wonder Wonder. I noticed that virtually every song on it is about unrequited love. Is this essentially a breaking up album?

I didn’t have any concept. The songs were written over a long period of time, some were new, some weren’t, so I can’t really say that. We just picked the best songs. And you know, a lot of them are oriented around relationships… and that’s always the case… (laughs)

In "Cars and Parties," one of the tracks on Wonder Wonder, you sing, "And though I want to open up my heart there’s too many parties." I think that’s a great line and it’s always stuck with me. I was wondering what it means…

I was just making the line rhyme with the last one… I don’t know… I had written that song in pieces where the verses came out on one piece of paper and then when I was working on it I was kind of babbling and making words that went together metrically. It came out to have a topic and everything, but, (laughs) I don’t know.

Well, it’s a good line.

I guess it rhymes kind of with heart, you know, parties… I don’t know… (laughter)

In "The Fear" are you referring to fear in general or fear in relation to matters of the heart like breaking down inhibitions to create intimacy?

Well that tune is kind of like a children’s song, like a nursery rhyme. It’s really simplistic. Actually, it’s about panic attacks and the dread that you feel a lot… all of the time (laughs).

What do you mean when you say, "love is the engineer?"

Well, it has a way of working things out. And I thought it was a cool image, the old engineer…

I like the image of "love is the carpenter" that you use too…

Yeah…

At the back of the album you thank God and I also noticed that in the song "Wonder Wonder" there is a reference to the bible. Is religion important to you and your work?

Well, it is in that I am a deep thinker in general and I think about these things and I don’t know what the deal really is. Or what the truth really is… and I’d like to find out. I can’t call myself a really super-religious person. I’m more curious and spiritual. For me, I’m curious about spirituality. And when my record was being recorded my dad was in the hospital and came really close to dying like three times and at that time I got religion for awhile (laughs) and I was really praying for him to get better and he did and he’s doing pretty well now. And I thank God on there because I thought if that was the reason why then I wanted to say, "thanks." But I don’t make a big point of that, everybody’s gotta figure out…

What they need.

Yeah.

What’s the weather like over there, by the way?

It’s getting colder and chillier out, it was raining all day yesterday…

It’s so hot here…

I’m all in like, sweat pants and sweatshirt… socks…

I just got my hair cut so I’ve got lots of little pieces of hair all over my face…

I hate that!

Agh, I know! Ok, I once read that you’re kind of obsessed with love and are always thinking about it.

Yeah, yeah… you gotta have a hobby.

Are you interested in other arts that reflect love stories like literature or movies… any favorites?

Um… like romance books?

Oh God, no, no…

‘Cause I was thinking about that the other day. I had read a couple when I was a little kid and they’re so terrible. I was thinking about, you know how they have conventions with all the writers? I wonder if they read each other’s shit…

That sounds crazy…

I wonder if they find it a valid art form. I guess they… I digress… I don’t know… I don’t so much go for the love thing in movies, crappy love stories, as much as I go for science fiction.

You’re into sci-fi books?

Or just like real fantastic…

Like Philip K. Dick?

Yeah… I collect him, in the 80′s I was really into him and reading him all the time. I have all the books, I haven’t read them in a really long time. I don’t call myself an expert anymore… I do have about 55 of his…

I didn’t realize he had that many.

Yeah, well he had a lot, a lot, lotta paperbacks and trashy books he’d written in 10 minutes or something… (laughs). Some of them are a lot better than others…

Ok, um… do you have any direct influences by other musicians?

Direct?

Well, you’ve been compared to Liz Phair and Chan Marshall. How do you feel about the comparisons?

Well, the Liz Phair thing, if it didn’t happen every time… it kind of annoys me because I see my name next to hers and also Patsy Cline, it always says, "Liz Phair crossed with Patsy Cline." It’s just… I don’t know… I love Liz Phair, I love Patsy Cline, I collect both of their music along with a million others and I think it’s like the voice might be too similar to some people or… I don’t think people think I sing as well as Patsy Cline… maybe I’m somewhere between the two. I wonder who they compare Liz Phair to… nobody.

Do you feel like you’re really into the Indie scene, do you feel connected to it?

In a way I know a lot of people and I get along with a lot of people but in other ways I’m kind of an ostrich because I’m not really buying all this stuff and I don’t really know my Indie rock as well as some other people. Mostly what I look for is weird shit…

Like what?

I really love kooky shit.

Like… Devo?

I love Devo!

Me too!

That was one of the first groups I was totally nuts over but, weirder than that… like really annoying music like Mrs. Miller, she’s a really bad singer. And Jonathan and Darlene Edwards. They did like this crazy bad music. And tons of rockabilly…

Most of this stuff is on vinyl…

Yeah, yeah, yeah… I’m trying to find it in a digital form or burn it onto cds. I have so much of that stuff. I went through this project where I was finding MP3s of stuff that I have and putting it on cds for the tour that I just did and I have like 7 cds with 200 different songs on each cd.² And then the World Trade Center thing happened and we were listening to the radio all the time.

What was that like, being on tour in America while the calamities surrounding the tragedies were taking the country by storm?

Well, it sucked. New York was the last place I lived before Chicago. It was really awful, I had to wake up the band and tell them. Of course, the first thing everybody thought when I said something awful had happened was that the van had gotten stolen and I was like, no, it’s worse. Um, and we didn’t know what to do, for half the day… we just watched TV and ate breakfast… we didn’t have a show that night. It was a driving day. We had a three-week tour and that was the only driving day by coincidence, so that was good. We didn’t have to play that night. But the next show was in Denton so we had to decide whether to keep going or not while thinking is the world at war? Can we even go on the highway? Everybody lives in Chicago except for Amy who lives in Arlington, she was like, "I need to go home." But we all decided to keep going and we were in a way we didn’t have to go straight through New York, we were going south then east. And that show, we didn’t know if it was going to happen and it did and it was a great show.

Did you notice a change in the audience at all?

That’s all everyone was talking about… the first week or so was bad for attendance but the people who did show up were really cool… it’s really wild to be a traveler in the middle of all that. We were getting along really great, the band… it was like the Fourth of July outside, all the flags… I never thought I’d experience that… I want to go back out again really soon which I never say. I gotta go west.

Do you have any rituals before writing like some writers do?

I’m really not disciplined…

You work randomly?

Yeah… (laughs), when I work.

Okay, I noticed that the voice coming through your songs kind of borders on shyly or anxiously confident as if these two parts of yourself are struggling with each other. Do you see yourself as shy or extroverted?

I’m a loner a lot. I stay home and do my own projects, am in my own world. I love being with my friends but I don’t go out that often… I don’t go to see shows. Probably, I’m more introverted. Shy? I’m not shy around people I know at all. In a crowd I’m totally, uhhhhh…

You like the Cocteau Twins…

Yeah!

Did they influence you at all?

Sure, a lot when I was first writing. They were one of my favorite bands ever in the 80′s.

What’s your favorite album of theirs?

Oh, I guess Victorialand. And Blue Bell Knoll.

You got your first guitar when you were 14.

Yeeeeeeeah!

Did your parents get that for you?

I guess so, I can’t remember.

Did they encourage you?

Yeah, my mom always had a piano… and she was always into music, into orchestra type musicians, so she was always encouraging me to take lessons. I took cello for awhile, piano…

When did you know you wanted to be a musician?

God, I was always into music and obsessed with it and I got a record player and that’s when I was sure that’s what I really wanted to do when I was 10 years old. That was my heart’s desire but I didn’t think it was possible to do ’cause nobody in my family is a musician.³

Did you worship rock stars?

Well, the first group I worshiped was The Carpenters. I lived in Mexico when I was in fourth grade to ninth and I was collecting records and in the early teens got more album oriented. But what you can get in Mexico is really limited. And it was really pop like Andy Gibb. When I moved back to the states my taste in music shot up to a much higher quality (laughs). I’ve always gobbled music…

When you were in high school did you go through a punk or new wave phase?

Yeah!

Madonna?

Yeah! I saw her first tour and I didn’t think she was the greatest singer on earth but I liked "Borderline."

What about her stuff now?

It’s something I’d throw on a mix tape, a guilty pleasure (laughs).

Yeah, good to dance to… well, we’re devoting a part of this issue to menstruation. And I was wondering if you had anything to say about it. Do you hate it or love it or don’t care…

I think it’s a pain in the ass. I’d rather not have it. I got my period when I was 12 and it was like this big milestone like, you’re a woman now. But my personality is more tomboyish and it’s — to me — a bit of an inconvenience. But, I guess I’d rather have it than not, ’cause I don’t want to go through the change. I’m 37 and it’s like, tick, tick…

What do you think of feminism?

I’m not politically minded and I know my life has been affected by my gender. And I know that there are many ways, especially financially that I’ve been dicked over. Respect you don’t get… or even the other way around, reverse discrimination… I have a problem with segregating women…

Like marginalizing?

Yeah. And like, I don’t…

You don’t want people to listen to you just because you’re a woman.

Yeah. Or like, say that I’m more or less of anything because of my gender. And I do get a chip on my shoulder about those festivals, Ladyfest. I did one in France and I just think ultimately it’s not good karma. I’ve said it before and then someone will say, well, look at Punkapalooza or whatever, where there’s no women… I don’t know. I know guys discriminate. But I don’t want to discriminate because I’m discriminated against.

So, do you think women have finally arrived in music?

When have they not been in music? They’ve always been. Ever since women have been there, they have been. Always.

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.

There’s no reason for Frost to blush about her warm-blooded urban folk, an adult-contemporary take on indie-rock that’s equally fit for NPR and college radio. Still, one can sense the musician mentally uncapping a digital highlighter as she talks about her music, particularly while paraphrasing the press reception to her first album, 1997′s Calling over Time: "Dreamy, sleepy, country-folk songs for jacking off in the bathtub," she says. "That was the overriding feeling I got, though it’s not what I had in mind. I wasn’t aiming for any particular style. If I tried to do one specific thing, there’d always be somebody better at it than me."

Frost’s subsequent course has strayed not only from the bathtub but also from country and folk. For her second record, 1998′s Telescopic, the singer placed her seemingly fragile soul at the mercy of Royal Trux’s Neil Hagerty, whose rocked-up production accentuated the eccentricity that always lurked in the shadows of her voice. The singer now broadens her horizons on two new albums: Wonder Wonder, her third solo LP (like her others, on Drag City), and Tramps, Traitors and Little Devils, the inaugural slab from a self-proclaimed Drag City Supersession, which stars Frost, Hagerty and Smog’s Bill Callahan.

Rich with melancholy, Wonder Wonder falls somewhere between its full-bodied predecessor and the singer’s spare debut. "I love the freakiness of Telescopic," says Frost, "but I wanted more variety. This one’s got more flavors popping in and out." Indeed, her double Wonder pops and crackles, with serene folk tunes like "True" and "Easy to Love" brushing up against busier bits like the country-pop of the title track and "Cars and Parties," which is reminiscent of Liz Phair. This last song is perhaps the most telling, in its contrast of the singer’s blunt nostalgia for her Texas homeland”both in her lyrics and vocal tics”with a pop backdrop that smacks of the Chicago music scene where she now hangs her hat. Rather than summon storybook imagery, Frost finds that "every strip mall on the highway reminds me of my home"; even as her voice conjures timelessness, the Internet aficionado subtly addresses the contemporary notion that home is nowhere. "Edith comes over as low-key, but she’s really bold and unconventional," says Jon Langford, who has recruited Frost’s pipes for the Mekons as well as his solo work. "There’s no artifice or technical tricks that get between her and the tune."

This intimacy with the song is put to the test on Frost’s Supersession recordings. The album features contributions from each of the singers’ pens, but the puppet strings are handled by Hagerty, who produced the album and even assigned cover songs to the singers. This provided Frost with two of her most stunning recorded moments to date: Lou Reed’s "Charley’s Girl" and Randy Newman’s "Old Man." While the first song finds the singer’s sinless croon hobnobbing with a fierce wall of guitars, the Newman selection digs deeper, as Frost lays into the weeper with a ghostly calm.

"I figured Edith’s voice would heighten the song’s understatement and almost seem like a misreading," Hagerty says of "Old Man," in which the narrator addresses his deathbed-ridden father. "Whatever she felt about it is locked in those notes." What Hagerty didn’t know was that Frost — who had never heard the song before she recorded it — was preoccupied with thoughts of her own father, who was scheduled for surgery the following day. "’Old Man’ was a little too intense," she says. "The lyrics hit the exact feeling of loving a person and being so scared that you’re going to lose him. Right after his surgery, everything you could imagine went wrong with my dad. We thought he was going to die, and I couldn’t help thinking that the song was evil."

"Thankfully, he pulled through," she continues. "But when I hear the recording, it still brings me utter pain." She pauses, then puts down her digital highlighter. "I guess that’s what makes music great — when it’s too much for the singer to bear."

Edith Frost’s Wonder Wonder and Drag City Supersession’s Tramps, Traitors and Little Devils are out now on Drag City.

In 1999, in a review of Edith Frost’s second full-length, Telescopic, David Keenan wrote in Wire magazine, "It’s rumored that the album was originally fully orchestrated, but Drag City ordered it to be stripped back to basics.*  Now there’s a potential bootleg worth killing for, if only to hear Frost nuzzling up to strings."  Keenan must be thrilled by Frost’s latest album, Wonder Wonder, also on Drag City, which has no shortage of strings.  It is, in a word, lush.

Edith Frost, in case you haven’t heard of her, has been put into every box imaginable, from Nashville honky-tonker to heir to the throne of Leonard Cohen.  There’s no question her roots are rootsy and some of her songs — "Easy To Love" and "Honey Please" — bring to mind early Patsy Cline, swinging her skirt as she sings to her dancehall crowd.  But she’s also echoing newer models, with songs like "You’re Decided," on which she sounds exactly like Liz Phair — albeit one prettily singing, "I can’t stay mad at you / As long as there’s a sparkle of light…"  And it sounds even more like Phair when a fuzzy electric guitar makes its entrance toward the end.  The title track, which is funny, employs a sort of Appalachian percussion — as if she rumbled around her house and decided to use everything including the kitchen sink.  "True," the first track, is what’ll slay David Keenan, though, with its shimmering string section, a piano that, like her voice, is achingly pure here, and the use of both triangle and cymbal that dignifies those high-school-band bottom-feeders.  <…>

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.

"I’ve lived in a lot of places," Frost says from her current Chicago residence. "Well, not more than I can count on my fingers, but still a lot. I grew up in Texas, and I spent part of my childhood in Mexico — Guadalajara — then I was back in Austin, San Antonio, and Austin again. …I moved to New York after college for a while, for, like, seven years."

Since her auspicious musical beginnings, Frost has explored a variety of musical styles in a variety of groups, including the Holler Sisters (with whom she covered Carter Family tunes), the Western-ized Marfa Lights, and Edith & Her Roadhouse Romeos, a bare-knuckles rockabilly outfit that Edith says really kept her voice in shape.

On her third (and just-released) full-length album, Wonder Wonder (Drag City), Frost’s voice is most definitely in shape. And, as with her earlier releases — 1997′s Calling Over Time and 1998′s Telescopic (both on Drag City) — she covers quite a bit of stylistic and tonal ground. From slow-core Americana ("Honey Please"), quick-strolling country ("Further"), and swingy player-piano-colored numbers ("Easy To Love," "The Fear") to wide-open torch songs ("True"), Elephant 6-ish horn and woodwind arrangements ("Wonder Wonder"), and bare folk-country ("Hear My Heart"), each song is bouyed by Frost’s direct, graceful voice and warm melodic sense, and delivered with Patsy Cline-like aplomb.

"It’s pretty smooth, considering how many people were involved, and how crazy it could have been," Frost says of the album, which, at times, featured upward of 10 people recording simultaneously. Wonder was recorded with Steve Albini in his Electrical studio in Chicago, a process that, Frost enthuses, "was a gas… because I had all these people around me, and I was in a big circle — and I felt like a real mini-rock-orchestra leader. It was really neat."

Wonder Wonder also marks a return of sorts to a more immediate, candid tone, especially where vocals are concerned. "The first record was really, in-your-face, really intimate," says Frost. "On Telescopic, they let me go crazy with the vocals, and add all these layers. [So] I wanted to do one [album] that was more, you know, back toward the intimacy in the vocals. And I did have a lot of overlapping, a lot of action in the vocals on this record, but I still think it’s more… up front."

And what about the songwriting and selection process for her albums? "I don’t plan in advance," says Frost. "If I have a song, I’m happy that I have a song, period, whether it falls into the category I need it to or not. For every album we just go through and pick, like, 25, and then narrow it down to 15 that we really, really wanna do for this record, or whatever. But the sound, the feel of the record doesn’t really emerge until it’s recorded, and it’s ’cause there’s all that room to let new things happen in the studio, which is wonderful."

But, Edith says, just because a song doesn’t make it onto an album immediately, that doesn’t mean it won’t pop up later. "There [are] always sleepers… songs that it’s like, ‘Damn — I still haven’t recorded that!’ You know? And I think it’s good. And [Wonder producer] Rian Murphy has his favorites, ’cause he has everything I’ve ever done — he’s like the keeper of the tapes — and he’s always like, ‘You gotta do that one!’ And I’m like, ‘No! Eww! Gross!’"

Edith Frost and Boxstep play at 8 p.m. Wed., Sept. 26, at Millvale Industrial Theater, Millvale. 412-422-8864.

In A Van Down By The Lake

After about 20 years of pursuing her career singer songwriter Edith Frost has only recently enjoyed some national attention. Her new album, Wonder Wonder, is a curious exploration of music that has no real definition. Her careful insight and poetic lyrical approach are certainly unique. The Leader recently had a short chat with Edith Frost — in her own tour van.

Leader: Your second album was Telescopic. What have you been doing in the two years since?

Edith Frost: Not much. After Telescopic came out I toured a lot. That came out in ’98, I spent two years touring on that record, both here and in Europe. I guess it was a year and a half, a year now that I’ve been sort of slackin’ off.

L: When did you begin to write for Wonder Wonder?

EF: Well, the songs are actually pretty broad from when I first started writing songs until now. Which… every record is like that. We’re pulling from whole catalogues. A couple of the songs are brand new, like when we first started to record, a couple of the songs are from within the past year, and then there are some really old ones too. It’s a mix, so I can’t really say when I started, all I ever do is like keep writing, then we just choose the best songs.

L: Do you have any rituals when you write?

EF: Yeah, I think about words for a while, I’ll jam on my guitar a bit. It comes together in pieces. Sometimes the words make an apparent melody that seems to want to go with it. Maybe sometimes you might come up with a guitar riff. Sometimes the song writes itself almost, but not usually.

L: How does it make you feel to have critics trying to put you into a genre?

EF: Well, I don’t think I belong, I don’t feel comfortable in any genre. I don’t think I do any genre the justice it needs to be done. So, I don’t know. If they called me country, people that are really into country are going to hear it and think I am a fraud. So, like, when I am writing, I do write straight country songs, or blues, and they are pretty standard. I try not to lean on that too much. I don’t want to peg myself down. I don’t have to, they’re already doing it to me. I just stay away from predictability.

L: Having started writing music in the early ’80s and not having a major release until 1996, you have to be pretty patient. What was that like?

EF: The first EP, I was in shock, I had already made the recordings, you know, they were home recordings. It took like a year for the damn thing to come out. I was like yelling at them. Like, you guys I would have gone to another label! And I was all just freakin’ out and they were like, Edith, it just takes that long to get artwork and that’s what you have to do. And the next record, it was equally long, and I did get more involved in the details, and now I realize why it takes that long. The artwork alone is like six months, right there.

L: You toured Europe, how was that?

EF: It was OK, I don’t have any records out over there so not that many people knew who I was or anything. They were really nice. If you don’t have a record out there, it’s really hard. It was really good, considering.

Edith Frost is currently on tour in support of Wonder Wonder.

Rockabilly¹ artist Edith Frost sings from the past
By John Staton, Morning Star Correspondent

For Chicago-based singer/songwriter Edith Frost, they just don’t write ‘em like they used to.

"I collect really old-timey stuff," Ms. Frost says, speaking from her home in Chicago during a phone interview.  "My mom actually has a cylinder player and a Victrola, and so when I was growing up I was hearing really, really antique music.  So it’s in me.  I think the earliest songs that were recorded are some of the best tunes that you can find."

Edith Frost uses traditional music structures that she dresses with her own emotionally complex, achingly beautiful songs.

Still, it wouldn’t be fair to pigeonhole Ms. Frost’s new album Wonder Wonder, her fifth release for Chicago label Drag City, as homage to antiquity.

With an endearing vocal style that’s strikingly similar to a better-known Chicago songstress, Liz Phair, Ms. Frost uses traditional music structures that she dresses with her own emotionally complex, achingly beautiful songs.

Ms. Frost is currently touring in support of Wonder Wonder and will play in Wilmington Monday at 208 Princess St. downtown.

Ms. Frost grew up in San Antonio² but, as the long, blue mohawk she used to sport would indicate, the town did not immediately inspire a love for country music.

"When I was a teen I really got into more punky stuff, and turned my nose up at anything rootsy.  It took a while for it to seep in, I guess."

Things began to turn when she moved to New York and started playing in rockabilly and old-time country cover bands.  And while she doesn’t eschew modern music — she likes the new Björk album, for example — she has not "listened to brand-new records too much lately, mostly my old favorites."

Of the songs on Wonder Wonder, Ms. Frost has written them all about things that matter.

Cars and Parties, with its driving drumbeat and catchy chorus ("Everywhere I go reminds me of someplace down in Texas") is about longing for a less hectic, more profound existence.  (Ms. Frost is a lifelong city dweller.)  The Fear backs up words about not succumbing to inner weakness with dramatic, silent-movie-style organ chords.

The title track, perhaps the album’s most memorable (and reminiscent somehow of the Beatles’ When I’m 64), throws a kitchen sink full of instruments and sound effects behind lyrics delivered almost whimsically:  "I don’t know why I’m stayin’ with you / If everything they’re sayin’ is true / I heard about you lyin’ to your mama, baby / And I wonder wonder what I should do."

And if you’ve ever gone through a difficult breakup, the words to the sad, sedated ballad True could start you cryin’ all over again:  "Blue / Like your eyes you left me blue / Like my heart you left me blue / On the night you told me you could never love me."

Produced by Rian Murphy, who has worked with luminaries like Will Oldham, and engineered by Steve Albini (Cheap Trick, PJ Harvey, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin), Wonder Wonder also features folks Ms. Frost calls "my pals," who also happen to be a who’s who of the tight-knit Chicago music community: solo artist Jim O’Rourke,³ Archer Prewitt (The Sea and Cake), Glenn Kotche (Wilco) and many others.

"We did the basic tracks with… like seven or eight people playing at once," Ms. Frost says, and it lends the album a warm, orchestral vibe that’s intimate and never over-produced.

For her appearance in Wilmington on Monday, Edith Frost will bring a five-person setup that includes herself on guitar and vocals; Jim Becker on guitar and violin; Ryan Hembrey on bass; Amy Domingues on cello; and Adam Vida on drums.

As Edith Frost’s latest album makes clear, she is a very talented woman.  First, she knows how to make warm country pop that could melt just about anyone, even her notoriously cold sound engineer, Steve Albini.  Second, her voice can croon like Patsy Cline or whine like Liz Phair, sounding equally strong and convincing in either style.  Third, she has impeccable taste in session musicians, who this time include Sea and Cake’s Archer Prewitt, Wilco’s Glenn Kotche and Eleventh Dream Day’s Rick Rizzo.  Last, but certainly not least, she is from Texas.  (OK, that’s not a talent, but it’s still cool.)

So what’s the problem?  The problem is that there is no problem.  Drag City has a reputation for putting out records — even pop records — that are truly uncommon.  Take Gastr del Sol’s "Camofleur," for example, released on the label in 1997.  John Fahey guitar lines knock up against bloopy laptop loops and psychedelic lyrics, some sung by guest vocalist Edith Frost.

Unfortunately, that sort of daring is not at hand on "Wonder Wonder."  Most of the songs are pretty, countrified soundscapes that easily wash over the listener, yet leave nothing memorable.  The sweeping cymbals and tinkling bells are a nice touch on "Who," but the song doesn’t really go anywhere.  However, Frost gets it perfect on "Further," complete with a sliding violin and unsure voice advising "Don’t blow out the candle little girl / Keep a little flicker glowing / Don’t give up the passion little girl / Don’t you ever let it die down."  Hopefully she will follow her own advice, and until then I will wait patiently for her next record (or her next guest appearance).