An Album full of beguiling snaps Some songwriters deal mostly in broad strokes, building their tunes from sweeping generalizations and big, sturdy riffs, with results that are frequently stirring and occasionally anthemic, but seldom deep or revealing. Kathleen Edwards takes the opposite tack. Her songs come together through subtle gestures and snapshot imagery, an approach that's almost pointillistic in its accumulation of detail. It doesn't make for a terribly rabble-rousing sound, and Asking for Flowers, her third album, doesn't even pack the bar-band punch of her 2003 debut, Failer. Instead, the songs here quietly insinuate themselves, edging their way into consciousness so casually that often you're barely aware of being caught in the groove before the lyrics have you completely hooked. Some of that stems from her singing style, a plain, vibrato-less sound that verges on the girlishly earnest; and some from her sense of melody, which follows the chords with the easy flow of casual conversation. Mostly though, it's the way she brings those elements together to tell a story. Just as Edwards's music avoids the brash or blunt, her sense of narrative tends to be equally indirect, encouraging her audience to listen between the lines. Sometimes that's because she doesn't want the larger points to get lost in the details. For instance, the angrily mournful Oh Canada alludes to the 2006 Boxing Day death of Jane Creba without naming her, precisely because Edwards is appalled that Canadians weren't equally upset by the tragic deaths of other, unnamed minority girls in Toronto that year. Likewise, Edwards paints such a moving portrait of innocence taken and a life ended in Alicia Ross that it's hardly necessary to recognize Ross's name from the news to be moved by her story. Edwards is aces at boiling her stories down to the emotionally significant details, and her best songs deftly articulate the music's mood to underscore the feelings she wants to convey. So even though it's hard to draw much in the way of specifics from Buffalo, other than that it seems to be about driving through a snowstorm to hook up with an old flame, there's no problem at all in grasping the protagonist's jangled nerves as she bounces between anxiety and wan hope. It's a lovely bit of writing, and a wonderfully impressive opening to the album. Yet for all Edwards's strengths, there are moments when it's tempting to ask for more. Although it's nice that she keeps her singing simple and straightforward, having a bit more power and articulation would make it possible to follow the wordplay in lyric-packed songs like The Cheapest Key without having to turn to the CD booklet. And while the small-scale charm of her voice is perfect for something as quiet as the unlikely love song Sure as Shit, a few slightly broader strokes wouldn't have hurt on a torch song as moving as the title tune. Still, those are relatively minor cavils, and in the end Edwards's strengths far outweigh her failings. Besides, how could you not like someone who can spin a lyric as drolly self-denigrating as "You're cool and cred like Fogerty/I'm Elvis Presley in the seventies"? Rating: 3 out of 5 J.D. Considine The Globe And Mail				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews