Kathleen Edwards - 'Asking for Flowers'
Mining a meaty terrain of botched relationships and the minor details of life that loom large in recollection, Kathleen Edwards has returned with an intimately personal album, replete with an unassuming but perceptive intelligence. ‘Asking for Flowers’ is her third studio release and is simply splendid, featuring songs that sweep across a gamut of emotional material from sensitive vulnerability to dispassionate yet heart-felt defiance.
Unlike fellow Canadian (and friend) Feist, Edwards works firmly at the alt-country end of the folk spectrum, similar perhaps to Lucinda Williams in mood, while being vocally more comparable to Beth Orton. And an excellent voice she has, soaring with a simple openness that curls in sweet quiffs around the edges while conveying a refreshingly clear sense of self-assurance.
Take the beguilingly laid-back ‘I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory’ for example, her supremely casual delivery belying a lyric that resentfully rails against sexual inequality through playfully rhyming pairs • ‘You’re Chateauneuf, I’m Yellow Label / You’re the buffet, I’m just the table’.
Better still is ‘Alicia Ross’, its devastating story told through carefully pared down phrases that simmer with thoughtful weight, or the aching tenderness of ‘Sure as Shit’, its beautifully bruised plea for faithfulness • ‘if you look at other girls / working out in the nighttime / I don’t mind but I don’t want to know it’ • simply coupled with a fragile line of acoustic guitar.
Edwards produced ‘Asking for Flowers’ in conjunction with Whiskeytown producer Jim Scott, through whom she assembled a quite astounding group of session musicians. Aside from her husband, the guitarist Colin Cripps, the album features pedal steel whiz Greg Leisz (Lucinda Williams, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss), veteran bassist Bob Glaub (Leonard Cohen, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), keyboard player Benmont Tench (The Heartbreakers) and drummer Don Heffington (Bob Dylan), their contributions elevating Edwards’ work with gorgeous results.
It’s Edwards who carries the show however, the material on ‘Asking for Flowers’ exhibiting a surprising maturity coming from a twenty-nine year old. Either way, her songs are infused with such bitter-sweet honesty that they can’t help but get under one’s skin.