2008/04/23  Phoenix Concert Theatre; Toronto, ON Smells like T.O. spirit "You guys smell like home!" Considering how hot and crowded the Phoenix Concert Theatre was when Kathleen Edwards made this announcement Wednesday evening, it's doubtful the city of Toronto will want to consider "Smells Like Home" as its new tourism slogan. Even so it was clear Edwards meant it in the nicest way possible. It wasn't just that the Ottawa native seemed genuinely happy to be back in her adopted hometown; the Toronto date was something of a special occasion. She'd been on Late Night with David Letterman the night before, Asking for Flowers (her third and latest album) has been a critical and commercial success, and her sold-out show was being shot for a possible concert album. As triumphant homecomings go, you couldn't ask for much more. Yet even if it had been just another show in just another town, it would be hard to imagine Edwards putting any less of herself into the performance. And while some of that may be the natural investment any singer-songwriter makes when putting a bit of themselves into their material, much of what makes Edwards worth seeing boils down to simple stagecraft - that is, knowing how to make the most of your music and musicians. Edwards isn't an exceptionally powerful vocalist. Her soprano is clear but a bit thin, and it would be hard to imagine her powering through a song the way Linda Ronstadt or Alison Krauss might. Then again, she never tried, preferring to let the quiet, plainspoken quality of her delivery draw the audience's attention. Her opening, in fact, was a near-solo acoustic rendition of Mercury, delivered with such soft-spoken calm you'd almost think she was singing to herself. Yet within just a few measures, the beer-stoked crowd had quieted to a hush, allowing the song's gentle harmonies to redefine the room's dynamics. It wasn't folk music - the rhythm section, particularly drummer Joel Anderson, was too assertive for that - but it followed a similar strategy, making the primacy of words and melody so apparent that the audience couldn't help but listen closely. Some of that, of course, stems from the strength of Edwards's material. Even though she invariably writes in the first person, her songs aren't confessions so much as character sketches, presenting a vivid slice of emotion animated by music. But because her singing is so understated, her performances tend to trade spectacle (watch me suffer!) for empathy (isn't this sad?), an approach that can pull uplift even from the heartbreak implicit in songs like Asking for Flowers and Six O'clock News. It doesn't hurt that Edwards herself comes off as a bit of a goof, packing her between-songs patter with wry and occasionally ribald wit. During the encore, she went from describing an art project involving surplus vacuum tubes to offering a rambling rumination on tour sponsorship. Apparently, Edwards thinks she'd be the ideal spokes-singer for Always brand feminine-hygiene products, and invited the audience to imagine her "[rolling] down the highway with tampons on my tour bus." But it's her band that ultimately makes the difference. Between Colin Cripps, one of those rare lead guitarists who knows how to make a solo both flashy and hummable, and Jim Bryson, a keyboardist and guitarist who plays like a natural-born arranger, Edwards's instrumental foils knew precisely how big or how quiet the music around her works needed to be. Even better, they did so with such selfless grace that you barely noticed the extra dimension they added, whether in tunes as cheerfully raucous as The Cheapest Key or as delicately nuanced as 12 Bellevue. J.D. Considine The Globe And Mail				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews