Edith Frost: In Space (Drag City)

In Space sees Texan singer-songwriter Edith Frost return with her first album since 2005. At the start of her career, Frost moved to Brooklyn and played in country bands before moving to Chicago and signing to Drag City in the mid-90s. By 2005 she had released four solo albums featuring collaborations with indie icons such as Sean O'Hagan (Stereolab, High Llamas), Royal Trux and Steve Albini.

Her comeback record is a cohesive set of moody, jazz- and country-tinged ballads and mid-paced ruminations with a definite late 60s-early 70s feel. Doomily romantic, its narcoticised space-lounge tunes evoke the era when greats such as The Carpenters, Burt Bacharach and Scott Walker subverted MOR by injecting it with soul and yearning. This is sophisticated music - full of regrets, jaded and damaged but still holding out for something better. And as we all know, it's the hope that kills you...

In Space is lushly produced: you can imagine this sound costing thousands of dollars a day, for months on end, to achieve in the early 70s. Frost's classy, soulful tones never let rip, alternating between a graceful, melancholy glide and whispery asides. The album feels dreamlike, its songs' narrators dialoguing with themselves and cut off from the outside world as they attempt to wrest meaning from the passing years. The effect is strengthened by Frost's frequent use of double and multi-tracking on her affecting, heartbroken vocals.

Some songs stand out: the melodic richness of Nothing Comes Around tips its hat to later-period Elliott Smith, while Little Sign is as about as cheery and uptempo as this album gets (not very, tbh). Meanwhile the snail-paced regret of The Bastards is a perfect anthem for no-illusions-left 2025 ("Our funny world has gone away / We let the bastards get in our way"). Other tracks evoke Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys and mid-period Tim Buckley (the jazzy guitar of Back Again). The slow and spooky groove of Time to Bloom is another highlight. However, this is more of a vibes than a songs album: atmospherics generally trump memorable hooks and the album could have benefited from a greater variety of tone and tempo. It sounds nice but you may not end up humming too many of these numbers.

Lyrical themes include dazed survival (opener Another Year's "Been a long time / but I'm alright / At least I survived"); dissolution and guilt (the baroque, harmony-stacked What A Drag: "Maybe we could try destroying both our lives..."); and emotional resilience (the narrator of closer I Still Love You still loves its subject even though they have split up). The album's songs may document mistakes and regrets, but their narrators are still in there fighting - bruised but unbowed.

In Space isn't exactly packed with get up and go. But it's pretty cold out so it could be just the time for exploring this record. if you fancy a luxurious wallow in melancholy, dive right in. 3/5