An ode to the only album I've truly liked so far this year

I have a very unabashed love of folk singers with throaty voices, scribbled lyrics, and guitars. I've crushed on many different musical genres over the years, but the only one I've ever been able to firmly dig my hooks into is folk (I'm using "folk" here as an umbrella term, only-- I guess I'm trying to pin down a feeling rather than a style). Maybe it has something to do with the cassettes my dad used to bring along on every cottage trip while I was growing up. I'm sure it has a lot to do with my tendency to attach myself to particular places, and the type of music that seems to surround them: urban is more exciting, urban is where I'm heading and what I need to learn to love, but I will always be a bit more rural at the core.

I have this clear memory of waking up at three in morning one snowy February day when I was fifteen. Rather than forcing myself back to sleep, I decided to waste the few hours I had left before school by nesting in the couch and blearily watching the MuchMoreMusic video flow. Nothing about it was memorable, but then there was this video by Kathleen Edwards on the screen ("Six O'Clock News", her first single off her first album, was the one), and for some reason it became a moment I would continue to remember. I remember that I was wrapped in at least two blankets at the time, one of them likely being the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sleeping-bag that technically belonged to the dog, but I was still cold. I remember that I had the TV volume down really low to keep from waking up the rest of my family, and that the snow heaps outside were turning slowly Tropicana as the sun began to rise. And the backyard was pretty, and the day was pretty, and the song fit even if her voice didn't sound all that polished. It was a moment where I suddenly forget that I was living in a filthy Toronto suburb, and truly believed that I was inside some beautiful rural morning. I desperately hate country music, but this wasn't that: this was just the country, in song-form. Everything fell together in a really delicate way, and it felt like I was home.

Her latest, "Asking For Flowers", gives me exactly the same feeling. The only difference this time around (apart from the fact that the the vocals are much less rough around the edges) is that she's moved on from waxing about rural rot and she's started singing about life experiences that ring even more true. It's always comforting to find an artist who seems to be moving at the same pace as you are-- in time, their songs become artifacts for you to claim. I'm lucky that Kathleen Edwards has yet to be picked up as a poster-child for mainstream Canadian folk. Sure, there was one song on the last album that got played on Mix 99.9 for a time, and then there's this new Polaris nomination-- but really, she's still an untouched resource. Good thing. That means these songs can still be mine to dust, polish, and hold dear.

"Six O'Clock News" meant something back then because it transported me to some rural place where I felt I belonged. The first time I heard "Sure As Shit" off this newest album, it also felt suddenly meaningful-- not because it took me somewhere else, but because it hit so close to home: while she was singing about "lounging around all day in a hot pink chenille housecoat", I was still wearing the wet terry-cloth towel I had been too lazy to change out of hours after my shower.

It's good, guys. I really mean that.