The air up there it's an old joke that canadians do americana better than most - from neil young to the band to blue rodeo and beyond - but there's often something intangibly tragic and bruised in the way they go about it. you can certainly feel it in neil young's ungodly vocal timbre or in the torch twang of blue rodeo, whose lyrics often find them shell-shocked and trying to ponder their way out of heartache across hard, vast lake ontario. even the (four-fifths canadian) band's deft, rollicking musicianship seemed a thin cover of bluster for the deep-seated tragedy lurking in richard manuel's voice. (just as, to paraphrase writer barney hoskins, their folksy farm-boy image was a red herring for the rock-star bullshit that would eventually hobble the group.) and the cowboy junkies haven't even been mentioned yet. this leads us to latest canadian export kathleen edwards, who has weighed in with what will probably end up being one of the finest roots-rock albums of 2003. and sure enough, even in its brightest moment, it carries significant emotional weight; hers is a voice that wants to sing like a clarion, but there's something (winter, heartbreak, bitterness) tugging it down around the edges. maybe this is the northern blues. lazy comparisons to lucinda williams have been dogging edwards, but edwards' is a young woman's muse and williams has seemed like an old soul since she first emerged in the late '70s (and williams' work is as distinctly southern as william faulkner). neil young's influence is apparent here, particularly on "one more song the radio won't like," but overall edwards is very much her own woman. what the listener is left with, then, is a batch of gorgeous, earthy tunes with their heart in their throat (fleshed out by strong production and a great roots-rock band). and listening to shell-shocked, pensive beauties like "lone wolf" or "hockey skates," it's hard not to ponder the dimensions of the literal and figurative coldness that these creative fires were stoked against. erik hage metroland.net				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews