Kathleen Edwards - Asking for Flowers
|
List Price: Our Price: $9.26 You Save: $8.72 (48%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.50 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Asking for Flowers
Free Music Review: 3rd Masterpiece from Kathleen
Hit: 5 Stars
It's hard to believe that Kathleen Edwards has been able to churn out 3 excellent albums in a row, without the slightest sign of anything
being rushed, duplicated, or cheesy, but she has done it.
When I listened to her first album, "Failer", I must have played it 50 times, and thought it was the best album made by anyone, in any genre, in 20 years. At first, I thought her second, "Back To Me" flagged a little, but then realized I needed to listen to it more and that it had simply taken a turn toward a more rocked up sound.
"Asking For Flowers" is yet another beautiful turn, still preserving Edwards gorgeously emotional husky voice and introspective story telling. But the melodies are more delicate and mature, as are the stories. If you enjoyed her folk, rock, and humorous styles on the first two albums, you will not be disappointed with this CD. All of those elements are still there. Songs like "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory" and "The Cheapest Key" show her cut-to-the-chase fighting side. Songs like "Asking For Flowers" are simply heartbreakingly beautiful and honest.
"Alicia Ross" carries its own weight about a kidnapped murdered girl, even if you don't know the true story on which it was based.
Musically, the styles are very similar to her other work, deftly mixing in some of Kathleen's solo violin playing, and the band's slide electric guitar and harmonica with just the right touches to add snap to the song arrangements.
The only knock I have against this album is the same one I had for the other two. The recording quality is just not up to par. All her albums have a mid-rangey muddiness that make the band sound like they were recorded in a metal box. The drums sound somewhat like old pots and pans, the bass is lost in murkiness with no definition, and her voice needs to be up more in the overall mix. But the musicianship, her wonderful singing, and beautiful songs are just so darn good that I can overlook the recording quality with ease.
If the rest of the stupid music industry would wake up and listen to albums like this, they would start to understand what it means to create a quality album - an album worth buying and listening to over and over again so you can appreciate it, like the layers of color on a fine oil painting.
It's truly rare to find somebody who can write good song after good song, never becoming repetitive or boring, and always stretching. This must be what it was like when The Beatles were releasing new albums in the 1960s.
Bravo, Kathleen!
Free Music Review: A Great Album, Sure as...
Hit: 5 Stars
A little less than two years ago I saw Kathleen Edwards in concerts at ACL Fest. There she introduced this new song that she had written about her dad. I have been waiting for "Scared At Night" since that day and even if there were no other songs on this album that alone would be worth the price. However, while it does remain one of the highlights, it is but one of many gems on this album.
Kathleen continues to walk the line between the bleak, gritty rasp of Lucinda Williams and the pretty, etherical poetry of Tift Merritt. Kathleen Edward's voice is very much a creature of earth and water, and her lyrics rooted in the rougher edges of the everyday, but together they take wing and soar. This album is much more grounded than her previous two, more adult, shedding the bad-boy loving party girl of her past outings. Or rather, not shedding her so much as maturing her. This Kathleen is not worried about where her boyfriend is or if he is going to jail, or even who he is at the moment. This Kethleen knows who she wants and probs that relationship carefully, checking out the fraying edges to see if they can hold. "Its complicated, technically I'm certified, a walking declaration of eveything I couldn't get right" she declares at the beginning of the album. The album follows the the threads of that, looking at the news of a crumbling world with the same semi-jaundiced eye as news of a young girl's murder.
The one flaw on the album is the one that has stalked Kathleen Edwards her entire career--her vocals are a sweet and delicate instrument that she too often burried under grungy guitars. However, the production and arrangements usually work to highlight the overall emotion of a song, so it works for her as much as it works against her. All in all, this is a sinewy, vibrant album full of heart that fits well between this years two other stellar releases, Tift Merritt's Another Country and The Drive By Truckers' Brighter Than Creation's Dark.
Free Music Review: Wasn't "Asking For Flowers" but got a great disc instead.
Hit: 5 Stars
Canadian artist Kathleen Edwards' latest offering "Asking For Flowers" is a very nice step up from her previous release "Back To Me" and is a true diamond in the rough. Even though some people have compared her to a younger version of Lucinda Williams, Kathleen Edwards is definitely a bona fide star in her own right and this release just cements what has been building over the last ten years. Each successive release has been more revealing than the last and the song quality and musicianship has continued to evolve, improve dramatically, and has been nothing short of amazing.
This disc easily has five or six tunes that will grab you by the collar and not let go. The lead-off song, "The Cheapest Key" has a great tempo and other songs such as "Buffalo," "Alicia Ross," "Run," "Oil Man's War," "Goodnight, California" and "Oh Canada" are solid, well-composed and finely crafted alt-country and rock numbers that are both a delight to hear and only get better and better with repeated playings. Yet, even with this strong line-up of songs, the true shining gems on this disc are the tracks "Scared At Night" and the title song "Asking For Flowers." In my modest opinion, they are genuine works of art!
When I first picked up this disc, I didn't quite know what to really make of it but with a little patience and an open mind, this release has quickly grown to be a personal favourite. I can only imagine that by the time I've finally had my fill of the CD - which may be never - there will be some serious skid marks to show for it. It's just that damned good!
Do yourselves a huge, huge favour and pick up a copy a.s.a.p. For fans of alt-country, pop and rock, this disc will not disappoint. Move over Lucinda, Kathleen's going to keep you company for a long, long time to come. This is, BY FAR, the best alt-country/rock release of 2008!
Free Music Review: Just Hitting Her Stride!
Hit: 5 Stars
O, me of little faith. I thought that Kathleen Edwards' musical career had stalled out. Her debut album of 2003 was a brilliant diamond in the rough, but her 2005 follow-up, though highly listenable, seemed to have polished all the edginess off of her work. Then came three years of silence.
Well, I needn't have worried... I guess Kathleen was just "pausing to reload." With "Asking for Flowers", Edwards has delivered a modern classic.
From the opening stately piano chords of "Buffalo", it is clear that Kathleen is working with a newfound confidence, finding subtle and ingenious ways to enlarge on her themes of windblown loneliness. "The Cheapest Key" follows, showing that she hasn't lost her knack for raucous send-ups of bad relationships. The title song rounds out a great opening trio of tunes, as one of Edwards' signature tales of patience stretched to the breaking point.
Throughout the album, there isn't one clunker. "Oh, Canada" is a blazing rant that shows exactly how incandescently Edwards can rock out. "Run", and "Goodnight, California" come close to borrowing a page from Neko Case's book of reverbed dreams. But, for me, the absolute peak of the album is "I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory", which is the kind of good-timey rocker that Rod Stewart was once capable of... back when he, too, was a great storyteller in song. The Hammond organ on this track sounds uncannily like Ian McLagan of the Faces.
All in all, I think "Asking for Flowers" confirms the fact that Kathleen Edwards is in the forefront of the "alt-country" movers and shakers, along with Neko Case and Ryan Adams. At all of age twenty-eight, there is every reason to believe that she will continue to grow as an artist. Count yourself lucky if you are just discovering her, because she is the real thing.
Free Music Review: Third Time Around For Kathleen
Hit: 5 Stars
Leave it to Kathleen Edwards to make her third album, ASKING FOR FLOWERS, every bit as caustic and as interesting as her first two (FAILER; BACK TO ME) had been. She has once again made a recording that ends up being one of my favorites for this year, alongside those of other roots-rockers like Sheryl Crow, Allison Moorer, Lucinda Williams, and Tift Merrritt.
It's very hard NOT to compare Kathleen's approach to either that of Lucinda (as they share the same imperfect but sharp kinds of voices) or her fellow Canadian Neil Young, because she has the same kind of songwriting intelligence and ruthlessness that those two legends have. She is aided and abetted here by great backing musicians like ex-Lone Justice drummer Don Heffington, Tom Petty's keyboard guru Benmont Tench, former Linda Ronstadt bassist Bob Glaub, and alt-country pedal steel legend Greg Leisz throughout the album. This all helps make the going smoother for Kathleen, as she goes sardonic with "I Make The Dough (You Get The Glory)" (with its references to her home country's national sport of hockey, and 70s Vegas-era Elvis), and very political on "Oil Man's War", a very sharp broadside against Bush that is worthy of comparisons to the aforementioned Mr. Young.
As is the case with Neil and Lucinda, Kathleen's approach to things is an acquired taste; but once one acquires that taste, it's hard not to be impressed. ASKING FOR FLOWERS will hopefully expand her presence south of Canada even more.