Sketches from the other side of town maybe it takes a diplomat's daughter to tell it to you straight. kathleen edwards's years as a consular brat (see her profile at right) may have been the perfect preparation for the kind of blunt, bar-room missives found on her second album. thieves, liars and lovers who do bad things are her quarry, and some of their vices may be hers. there's desire in every one of these songs, and it's mostly an outlaw kind of desire, for something neither willingly given nor gratefully received. in state is a vengeful sketch of a petty hoodlum whose only unforgivable crime is the theft of affection he keeps pretending to deserve. back to me lists a bluesy catalogue of retributions for a wayward lover, who had better know he can't sneak off to freedom. the scuffed realism of both songs shades over into a type of symbolic larceny. "i've got ways to make you sing my songs," edwards warns in her husky haunted alto, "ones i ain't written yet." independent thief captures the defiant neediness of edwards's characters, who won't say no to a bet even when they've already lost. they're at their best when bumping up against other people, in the grudgingly sociable songs of the album's first half. thereafter, edwards turns to more private themes of loss and dislocation. her voice gets lighter, her imagery more nostalgic. you start to notice a weakness in her craft that the vivid wordplay and gut-level delivery of the opening songs kept partly hidden. her oil-stained rock idiom (developed with her core trio of guitarist colin cripps, bassist kevin mccarragher and drummer joel anderson) isn't that distinctive, and seldom goes where others haven't been. several tracks find her shadow-boxing with lucinda williams (whose changed the locks may be the model for back to me) and sheryl crow, although, ironically, edwards sounds most like the latter when she's covering a song by jim bryson. musically, she's susceptible to clichés whose verbal equivalents she doesn't often tolerate in her lyrics. "memory is a terrible thing / when you use it right." anyone who can come up with lines like that is someone we need to hear, even if her musical imagination can be a little lazy. rating: 3 [out of 5] robert everett-green theglobeandmail.com				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews