Wilmington interview

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.