Nearly 20 years separate In Space from Edith Frost’s last LP, It’s A Game. Where’s she been? Living life, moving around (she’s back in her home of Texas now) and gradually building up a stock of new songs without any pressure to meet a deadline. Right around the time that she had enough of them to start recording, the pandemic happened, which slowed things considerably but also contributed the seeds for even more songs.
Two decades is plenty of time for things to change, but it’s remarkable how much has not. The records that Frost made for Drag City between the mid-1990s and 2005 were created with a combination of label and Truckstop Studio personnel who gave her pithy examinations of loneliness and connection an understated tension. Some of the same people—most notably producer Rian Murphy and engineer/multi-instrumentalist/arranger Mark Greenberg—are on board, and Frost returned to Chicago, where she lived throughout that run, to make In Space.
Frost’s voice remains supple, simultaneously cool and warm. It’s immaculately attuned not only to itself (she multi-tracks most of her lead vocals) but to the emotional content of her songs. The gap between her expressed sentiment and the sorry mess of a relationship she describes on “Can’t Sleep” feels true to the act of analysis. And the gentle lift in her delivery of “Little Sign” nicely matches the lyric’s call to mobilize against the nation’s more noxious political winds.
So, what’s different? Frost’s circle of consciousness has grown; while most of her earlier writing was relationship-focused, she’s added COVID-induced isolation and anti-Trump dismay to the mix. The country elements in her music have receded further into the background, like the banjo that floats in and out of the title track like an elusive memory. They have been eclipsed by ’70s stylings, like soulful kiss-off ballad “Back Again” and the Fleetwood Mac-ish groove that propels “Hold On.”
Frost plays more keyboards than guitars, adding a bit of harmonic padding and sonic novelty, but a squad of hired guns (Sima Cunningham, Jim Becker, Bill MacKay, Jeff Ragsdale) cover the stringed things quite nicely. Conscientiously crafted but never overstuffed, In Space strikes just the right balance between Frost’s previous work and present concerns. [Drag City]
—Bill Meyer
