Bursting onto the music scene in 2003 with her critically acclaimed debut album Failer, Kathleen Edwards quickly found herself performing on the Letterman and Leno shows, opening for The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and championed by Rolling Stone as one of the year's most promising acts. Now that the dust has finally settled, Edwards has delivered on the promise of Failer with a roots rock masterpiece. Back to Me confirms Kathleen Edwards as one of today's most talented new artists.The standout cuts on this follow-up to Kathleen Edwards's highly praised debut, Failer, serve notice that the Canadian artist has no intention of remaining a cult favorite in the States. The opening "In State" evokes the anthem-like sweep of Tom Petty's "Refugee," complete with signature organ by the Heartbreakers' Benmont Tench, though its lyric of a prison-bound paramour smacks of déjà vu, Failure having opened with a similar narrative. The propulsive title track, with its irresistible double-entendre hook, deserves to be Edwards's breakthrough hit, while the yearning "Old Time Sake" and the buoyant yet bittersweet "Summerlong" expose a disarming tenderness underlying her tough-chick bravado. Over the course of the album, too much of the midtempo material sounds too much the same, more inspired lyrically than musically, failing to sustain the momentum of the opening tracks. The stripped-down intimacy of "Away" will likely rekindle comparisons to Lucinda Williams, but this artist sounds eager to outgrow those. --Don McLeese
Influences and Contemporaries
Whiskeytown, Strangers Almanac | 
Whiskeytown, Faithless Street | 
Sarah Harmer, You Were Here |
Sarah Harmer, All of Our Names | 
Lucinda Williams | 
Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road |
