Asking for flowers is like asking you to be nice

Asking for Flowers - Kathleen Edwards

I find myself incapable of writing about Kathleen Edwards without falling back into easy cliches. But sometimes lazy writing is still sufficient to fully convey what's here, and I think this is one of those cases. Her new record Asking For Flowers sounds like all the really nice, mellow stuff from a Whiskeytown record, with lonely steel guitars, harmonicas, and a voice which gives everything you might expect from a good Lucina Williams song: the appropriate flashes of dusty roads and lonely nights, the requisite gritty tales of broken hearts and faded memories, a yearning for something left unstated.

Or, to give you another perspective, I could just point out that her backup band includes the keyboardist for Tom Petty, a guy who drummed for the Wallflowers, and a guy who played guitar for Sheryl Crow and Wilco. And it absolutely sounds that way. In my book, that's a good thing, but if that doesn't sound appealing you're probably not going to be surprised by anything here.