Pitchfork

Of all the female singer-songwriters who inhabit the borderland between actual country and general roots music, few have as much presence as Kathleen Edwards. The Canadian inhabits her gritty tunes with the kind of authority that should come from real experience. Hopefully, she hasn't lived through all of her songs, which document rankled love and hard times in grave detail. Over three albums in just five years, she's proven herself a more capably imaginative and intuitive songwriter than Tift Merritt, Allison Moorer, or even post-Car Wheels Lucinda Williams. Edwards may not have the commanding voice of Neko Case, but she usually has better words to sing.

What immediately sets her third and best album, Asking for Flowers, apart from her two previous collections is the opener. Both her 2003 debut, Failer, and her 2005 follow-up, Back to Me, kicked off with their best tunes, two hard-hitting, uptempo numbers that told the story of a petty crook and his exasperated lover. Asking for Flowers starts with "Buffalo", a downtempo song that shows off Edwards' new piano chops (she taught herself to play for this album) and her distinctive voice on the swirling chorus. It also features what sounds like an autobiographical angle, which is rare for Edwards: She sings about crossing the border into America and wondering if Customs will allow her to return. "Buffalo" isn't just a slow opener, but it's about paperwork.

If the song promises a more somber album than what came before, "The Cheapest Key" kicks those expectations in the teeth. Using an easy mnemonic that makes it sound like she wrote the song in ten minutes ("A is for all the times I bit my tongue / B is for bullshit and you fed me some"), Edwards takes a slash-and-burn approach, essentially going ballistic on whichever lout has dared to cross her. Her studio backing band, which includes members of the Heartbreakers (Tom Petty's, not Richard Hell's), have her back. Occasionally, they pad their part, as on the six-and-a-half-minute closer "Goodnight, California", but generally, they bolster her vocals without intruding on the spotlight.

The best moment in "The Cheapest Key" is Edwards spitting the line, "F is my favorite letter, as you know," which has both sexual and bird-flipping connotations. She peppers her songs with lines like that, not necessarily ambiguous but surprisingly frank, the kind that make you stop short. In the title track, about a beleaguered wife, it's the second half of the chorus: "Don't tell me you're too tired/ 10 years I've been working nights." In the wrenching "Alicia Ross", about a real-life case of a woman abducted and killed by her neighbor, it's the opening line: "I am a girl with a forgettable face." In "Scared at Night", it's pretty much every line. Delivering these lyrics, she sings herself nearly hoarse, as if mustering the conviction to convey these hardluck stories properly. There's a combativeness to Edwards' singing and songwriting, as if she knows she's working in a genre that favors tasteful decorum and too often churns out sonic wallpaper. On Asking for Flowers, she sounds better than her peers for being so much braver.