The night is Young Canada's Kathleen Edwards starts U.S. tour here tonight Here are my thoughts from my Munjoy Hill dwelling near suppertime Monday: There are few things more dreary-looking than dirty, sandy piles of snow embedded with trash, dog poop and the memories of a vicious winter. These melting eyesores do, however, mean that spring is really taking over. The pulse of the city is picking up, foot traffic on the streets has kicked into high gear, and the heavy artillery of outerwear is starting to thin out. This is good news for local musicians and their street teams, because "flyering" will get easier. Massive snowbanks won't need to be scaled, and fingers won't freeze to one's staple gun. Gig load-ins will be easier as better parking spaces reveal themselves. Guitars and drums won't be smashed to smithereens while being lugged through ice-encrusted alleys. I am hopeful and cheery, and I haven't even mentioned the fact that the Red Sox were big in Japan. Meanwhile, this week is teeming with bang-up shows, including tonight's performance from Kathleen Edwards. Canadian singer-songwriter Edwards is back with the new record "Asking for Flowers" (Zoe), and she's kicking off her American tour in Portland at the Big Easy. I caught up with Edwards a few days ago, and we talked about the new record and how she really digs Portland. "I love coming to Portland and stuffing my face with every part of shellfish I can get my hands on. It's a lot better than getting it in Saskatchewan," Edwards said. She's pleased with the new album. "I'm feeling really good about it," she said, "and I feel like I took a lot of risks in making this record. Until the first couple of reviews came out, I really didn't know if I'd even made a good record. "It's not like your opinion of yourself is so securely based in what other people say, but good reviews and bad reviews sometimes determine whether you're going to have 100 people at your show or 500 people at your show, and you always hope that you can move forward in what you do." Of the album's title track, Edwards said, "I think 'Asking for Flowers' is the best song I've ever written, but that's because I feel I invested a lot and I was telling a story of a friend who is really close to me, and I wanted to do it justice and worked really hard to do that." Another song she likes, and it's one of my favorites too, is "Goodnight California." "I always wanted to record a song like that," she said. "It just took me three records to find the courage to do it. I remember being in the studio trying to describe what I wanted to do, and everybody kind of looks at you like, 'What? A seven-minute song?"' As it turns out, Edwards has struck gold, and it closes out the record divinely. It includes a string quartet in which Edwards plays the violin, but you'll also hear her on vibraphone. A Hammond organ, electric guitar and harmonica bleed throughout the song; the percussion and bass are its heartbeat. The first-person song "Alicia Ross" is arresting in its intensity: "Mamma, can you hear me?/ As I dragged on the day's last cigarette/ He pulled me so hard off my very own back steps/ And he laid me in his garden/ All the years I've watched him tend." Alicia Ross was a real person. She was 25 years old when she was killed by a neighbor in Ontario. Her body went undiscovered for five weeks. It reminded me of the story of Amy St. Laurent, the young Biddeford woman who was murdered in 2001. What happened to St. Laurent hit me in the gut with the same force that the Alicia Ross slaying must have hit Edwards. "I still don't know why that story in particular — because there are so many stories all over the world of families losing daughters or mothers or children. It's tragic every time, and I think this one was a very public display of agony," Edwards said. The thought-provoking power of music is something that Edwards zeros in on, and "Asking for Flowers" documents this repeatedly. Aimsel L. Ponti Maine Today				Album reviews Feature articles Interviews Show reviews