I heart alt-country darlings. Apparently. Plus random other stuff.

I’ve been listening a lot to the new record by Kathleen Edwards called Back to Me, and it’s really good. I was sort of vaguely aware of her from her previous record Failer, but hadn’t really paid close attention. When Back to Me came out I started hearing her frequently on the excellent WFUV, the Fordham University-based radio station that I often stream at work, and that led me to her website, and that led me to a listening party at CMT.com where you could stream the entire album, which is like, the best idea ever. Because how many times have you been burned after hearing one or two songs by an artist on the radio that you dig, and then you buy the record and those are the only good songs and the rest of it bites? For me the answer would be “many”.

I’m pleased to say that that is not the case with Kathleen Edwards. I listened to Back to Me every day last week while the listening party was going on, and then when it ended I had to buy the CD so I could keep listening. I’m not quite sure why she’s considered alt-country, though. Actually I’m not quite sure what the term “alt-country” is even supposed to mean, but no one else seems to be either. I can sort of see it with Neko Case, Kathleen’s fellow alt-country darling (it’s the media’s phrase, not mine), whom I talked about a while ago, because her vocal style and musical arrangements clearly draw on classic country. But Kathleen seems more rooted in rock and folk, though there are country elements as well, like the lovely slide and pedal steel guitar work that dominates the album’s instrumentation. Regardless, this is a record full of great songs, from the snarlingly cynical “In State” to the swaggeringly sexy title tune to the moody, slightly disquieting “Copied Keys” (my fave), and Kathleen has a languorous quality to her vocals that I really like; it actually reminds me not a little of Beth Orton, though she lacks some of the richness of Orton’s resonant contralto.

I’m going to see Kathleen play in Santa Fe on June 15th, and for those of you in the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest, she’ll be swinging through your area before that, if you’re interested.

Also on the chick singer-songwriter tip, I’m almost annoyed at how much I like the song “Breathe (2 AM)” by Anna Nalick, but I totally do. I’m annoyed because the vibe I get from Anna (and admittedly I could be wrong; I know almost nothing about her except that she’s very young) is that she belongs to that class of marginally talented yet inexplicably successful women like Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton, et al., who write pedestrian songs with naïve and painfully earnest lyrics that appear to have come straight from the pages of their high school journals. (The degree to which I despise that sort of writing corresponds directly to my level of embarrassment over my own naïve and painfully earnest high school-era writings.) I mean, there’s even a point in “Breathe” where Anna tells us that “these words are [her] diary screaming out loud,” yet as cringeworthy as that moment is, the song as a whole is deeply affecting and never fails to move me when I hear it. I don’t think I’ll be buying the CD, though.

I did buy Alana Davis’s debut CD in 1998, on the strength of her cover of Ani DiFranco’s “32 Flavors”, which showcased her smoky, soulful voice. (She was quite young, too--only 16, I believe. If she’d been prettier, she could’ve been Joss Stone. [Please be assured of the cynicism behind that comment.]) Unfortunately the rest of the album didn’t hold up. She seems to do well with covers, though, because I just heard her doing an acoustic guitar-driven take on “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” that’s really good, and it reminded me of what a great song that is. You’ve gotta love a song that can be played a skillion times on classic rock radio, and made fun of on Saturday Night Live (the cowbell sketch was hilarious), but still grab you when you hear it sung with conviction. Oh, I also just heard the Decemberists and Petra Haden covering Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”. Also a great song.