Edith Frost

Texas-born, Brooklyn-influenced Chicago transplant Edith Frost gets quite a bit accomplished with her four-song debut EP. It introduces her melancholy talent that recalls the spirit of Kendra Smith at her least Paisley Underground, and Skip Spence at his most lucid. The acoustic guitar is strummed plaintively, while the smooth, nearly catatonic vocals add up to harmonies that threaten rain. “Evangeline” picks a whispered doom that sounds like someone who’s learned quite a bit from her Leonard Cohen records. “Blame You” slips into a sing-song pattern that borders on the innocence of children’s music. “My God Insane,” with Bill Neubauer on guitar, was apparently recorded out in the stairwell where the echo creates a muddy, dream-like quality, beautifully punctuated by Frost’s sudden emotional bursts. “Waiting Room” throws everything off-balance with a hilarious, cheap, mechanical drum machine offering up robotic beats to accompany thrift store keyboards and more of Frost’s ethereal harmonies for Gothic folk on a shoestring budget.