Edith Frost

Edith Frost

It's a Game (Drag City)

San Antonio native, former Austinite, and current Chicagoan Edith Frost might be the female equivalent of labelmate Bill (Smog) Callahan – in his latter years. Like the local voice of brambles, Frost's singing is full-bodied, yet curiously expressionless. Poker faced. In the songwriter continuum, she's Kate Wolf for the post-post generation, rootsy warmth grounded in pop: a direct but conscientious lyricist ("If It Weren't for the Words"). So if her fourth album, It's a Game, isn't a breakup lament, then the term bleeding heart applies only to liberals. The other woman in opener "Emergency," and the hooky recriminations and hopelessness of "What's the Use" ("... of trying when you're only going to break my heart") are no coincidence. The titles telegraph the heartbreak: "A Mirage," "My Lover Won't Call," and "Lovin' You Goodbye." The musical palette mirrors Frost's downcast tone, the piano and other soft merry-go-round touches evoked by the Game CD art (snapped by Frost), intimate, but cool to the touch, as if behind glass. A downer with a ghostly musical buoyancy ("Lucky Charm") and 10 minutes too long; the empty stairwell "Larger Than Life," awkward "Just a Friend," sluggish "Stars Fading." Fortunately, Frost's gallows twinkle ("Good to Know") has a place in all our scars.