After a near-total silence of twenty years, Edith Frost is back again with twelve new songs that revitalize the timeless luminescence of her voice and songcraft. In Space, out February 28 on Drag City, is her first new record since 2005’s It’s a Game, and it’s just in time — the world needs Edith’s voice back in the conversation. And her ineffable way with a tune...

It appears Edith needed something, too: from the notebooks of her long hiatus, a line like “I say too much/I wait too long/I wait forever/And notice that it’s gone” speaks volumes about feelings of lack. Overwhelmed by the demands of day-to-day living and the anxieties that always come, Edith squirreled herself away for as long as she could — only to find herself isolated, spun even farther into the doldrums. In Space is a very real exploration of the remote place she’d found herself, with her songs measuring the vast distances between herself: the life that is, and the life that was. In addition to new lyrical perspectives, her reinvention as a keyboard player during this long hiatus is one of the waves lifting her new album. The keys suggested different places within Edith’s harmonic palette, creating a deep focus on emotional life within the songs and a breathtakingly visceral presence in the performances.

Edith’s hallucinatory singer-songwriter abilities have been made all the more manifest by the passage of time. Amid twangy, hit-single production, her allusive, outsider-y disquiet recolors the sky in long, moody shades on “Hold On”, the lead single. Building the natural sweetness of familiar melodic phrases into something enigmatic and eternal, she never once slows, instead enhancing their pleasureful roots-rockin’ roll. The music video (by Simon Russell) holds the rail with footage of trains in steady motion, mirroring Edith’s lyrics.

In Space feels like the most Edith Frost record yet made: pulled from deep inside with great feeling, awash in harmonized voices, and featuring her own playing more than ever. The strange-new-world vibe of Edith’s songs are complemented by fresh arrangements from Mark Greenberg and longtime Frost A&R man Rian Murphy, with invaluable contributions from Jim Becker (Califone, Air Blue Gowns), Sima Cunningham (Finom, formerly OHMME), Bill MacKay and Jeff Ragsdale. Edith’s crafty songwriting orbits the human exchange with an increasing sense of possibility; it’s what the world needs the most of today.