Edith Frost 'In Space' LP

After a near-total silence of twenty years, Edith Frost is back again, and in full bloom with ‘In Space’. Her first new record since 2005’s ‘It’s a Game’ is just in time - the world needs Edith’s voice back in the conversation. And her ineffable way with a tune.

‘In Space’ revitalizes the timeless luminescence of her voice and songcraft with twelve new songs that take measure of isolation beyond the horizon of memory. Freezing time, then cracking it into crystalline shards, Edith discovers space everywhere she travels, within her and without her. A way-out country soul expression charting a heartening renewal of commitment and form. 

Overwhelmed by the demands of day-to-day living and the details and anxieties that always come, Edith squirreled herself away for as long as she could - only to find herself isolated, spun even farther into the doldrums. ‘In Space’ isn’t simply a song-cum-album title so much as very real exploration of the remote place she’d found herself, with her songs registering this recognition and measuring the vast distances between herself, the life that is and the life that was. It was the only way back in.

Over the years away, Edith was immersed in music every day and spent lots of time learning - in addition to new lyric perspectives, her reinvention of herself as a keyboard player is one of the waves lifting the album ‘In Space’. The keys suggested different places within Edith’s harmonic palette; for us listening, this attenuation seems to create a deep focus on emotional life within the songs and a breathtakingly visceral presence in the performances. Her voice as well, in all its iterations, sounds quite fine and vital. The songs, as ever, are low-key brilliance elevated by the vitality of Edith’s voice.

Mark Greenberg, alongside longtime Frost A&R man Rian Murphy, brought fresh arrangement ideas to complement the strange-new- world vibe of Edith’s songs. Recorded at The Loft in Chicago, with invaluable contributions from Jim Becker (Califone, Air Blue Gowns), Sima Cunningham (Finom, formerly OHMME), Bill MacKay and Jeff Ragsdale, ‘In Space’ feels like the most Edith Frost record yet made, pulled from deep inside with great feeling, awash in harmonized voices and - more often than ever before - featuring her own playing. Alternatively approaching and avowing connection, Edith’s crafty songwriting orbits the human exchange with an increasing sense of possibility. It’s what the world needs the most of today.