With past group associations that include the Negro Problem and 3D Picnic, singer/songwriter/keyboardist Carolyn Edwards is a member in good standing of the school of nouveau L.A. art pop, a movement that has as its local gods Brian Wilson and Jimmy Webb (with Burt Bacharach as patron saint). On her self-titled debut solo album, Edwards turns in a set of sophisticated, keyboard-based tunes that draw upon elements of everything from sunshine pop ("Shrink," the instrumental bed of which could be a track for a song by the Association) to soundtracks for Western movies ("Monica," "Lazy"). She writes long-lined melodies to support her run-along, sometimes unrhymed lyrics, which wryly comment on romantic matters, and sings those words in an attractive and precise if slightly uninvolved voice that suggests what the Jimmy Webb songbook would sound like as performed by Liz Phair. This becalmed manner is all the more striking in contrast to some of the more emotionally troubled songs, such as "The Argument," which begins with the observation, "He slammed his fist down on the dashboard/And bled all over my car," and goes on from there. "My voice rose to a scream," Edwards sings evenly. "It was not a beautiful experience for me." "Wrestling Match," despite the title, describes something closer to a beautiful interpersonal experience, but the singer still doesn't seem to be stirred by the memory of it. Rather, the whole point is that these feelings and memories are being transformed into pop artifacts to be examined from a remote perspective, as if they'd been experienced by someone else. Edwards seems to take seriously Wordsworth's dictum that "All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes it origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." And when a 2006 album sounds like it could have been made in 1967, such emotional distance only seems appropriate.
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