Edith Frost opens her first album in almost 20 years with an organ, some dramatic guitar strums, and an important question: “Can you hear me?” she sings on “Another Year”. The moment is small and intimate, as though she’s clearing her throat or testing her microphone. The song might have started as a downhearted pandemic Christmas song about spending the holiday away from loved ones, but in this new incarnation, it serves as a fitting reintroduction to this cult country singer, a witty means of acknowledging the long interval between records. “Been a long time, but I’m alright,” she continues. “At least I survived.”
Edith Frost opens her first album in almost 20 years with an organ, some dramatic guitar strums, and an important question: “Can you hear me?” she sings on “Another Year”. The moment is small and intimate, as though she’s clearing her throat or testing her microphone. The song might have started as a downhearted pandemic Christmas song about spending the holiday away from loved ones, but in this new incarnation, it serves as a fitting reintroduction to this cult country singer, a witty means of acknowledging the long interval between records. “Been a long time, but I’m alright,” she continues. “At least I survived.”
Frost specialises in making small moments and little epiphanies sound much bigger than they are. Her previous albums were full of the kinds of everyday worries and mundane concerns that gnaw at you over time, and In Space picks up those threads as though no time has passed at all. These new songs consider ideas and attitudes about absence, alienation and reconciliation, but Frost never sounds merely clever and doesn’t revel in meta career commentary. Instead, she simply settles into these small moments and patiently allows them to accumulate into something bigger and more powerful. As a result, this long-awaited album doesn’t sound like a comeback. Instead, it’s simply a continuation of what she’s been doing for 30 years now. She might be testing her mic, but there’s no rust in her voice.
Back in the mid 1990s, with the alt.country movement in full chug, the Texas-born Frost signed with Drag City, where she remains today. Like Kelly Hogan and Neko Case – two other Windy City transplants who thrived during the No Depression era – Frost always had one foot in twang and another somewhere else. Her EPs and LPs featured locals from other scenes, Jim O’Rourke and Sean O’Hagan on her 1997 full-length debut Calling Over Time, Royal Trux on the following year’s Telescopic, and members of Wilco and The Sea & Cake on 2001’s standout Wonder, Wonder. Her brand of country sounded distinctive, idiosyncratic and deeply embedded in Chicago.
After 2005’s It’s A Game, whose breakup songs have taken on more weight in retrospect, Frost went silent. Musically, at least. She didn’t retire from the industry or retreat from the scene, but simply stopped recording and releasing music. Even after she left Chicago for Austin, Texas, she still appeared on records by Chris Gantry and James Elkington’s old band The Zincs. Her biggest moment of righteous notoriety came when she was kicked off what was then known as Twitter for impersonating Elon Musk.
In Space emphasises the traits that distinguished her in the 1990s, but she’s not simply revisiting old glories. Working with longtime collaborators Rian Murphy and Mark Greenberg, she tracked these songs at the Loft, Wilco’s legendary clubhouse/studio in Chicago, with Sima Cunningham from Finom (formerly Ohmme) harmonizing subtly with her. Together, they create a casually twangy, tenderly psychedelic backdrop for Frost’s assured vocals while adding little flourishes in the margins, like the billowing Beach Boys chorus on “Nothing Comes Around” and the jazzy guitar licks on “Back Again”. She has a tendency to flatten out certain notes, to dive deep into her lower register and to break syllables in unexpected places – all of which allows her to convey sadness with warmth and wisdom.
Ultimately, In Space is an album caught between the past and the present, the old and the new. On “Little Sign”, which she originally cut as a one-off for the 2020 presidential election, she exhorts her listeners to dissent and resist in whatever ways feel right to them: “Make up a little sign, get happy with your mind.” It’s rare to hear a protest song so gentle and generous. Even as she roots herself in this moment, the past just won’t leave Frost alone. “Oh, when it all comes flooding back around me now/The sounds of an ancient past arriving now,” she chants on the title track, as her band churn up a quietly dramatic din around her.
In Space is that rare species of comeback album that doesn’t try to insist that no time has passed. Instead, every one of those 20 unrecoverable years plays out in every song. It’s a lively and vivid collection, funny and angry and chagrinned, but mostly it’s a very specific kind of melancholy: not gloomy or despondent, but quietly aware of what has been lost and cannot be regained. “Our funny little world has gone away,” she declares on “The Bastards”, but she’s rebuilding it song by song, moment by moment.
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