But Wonder Wonder stands independently, rising from the sky blue of her Texas home and reaching into the bleak cityscapes which are defined by pavement rather than greenness. Her vocals are more challenging than ever, and her voice soars and dips, taking us right to the edge of safety and revealing it's edges, before bringing us back to center. Less difficult tonal passages could have been taken, but the vocal stays true to the emotional range of her beautifully crafted material.

Wonder Wonder also stands alone in it's aural moodiness as the first album by Frost that has a truly upbeat tone. (I found it the perfect party album during a low-key holiday gathering.) This isn't to say that the numbers aren't at times sorrowful. "Blue," the first track on Wonder Wonder, is as classic a Frost tune as any you will find, but the step into the upbeat 2nd track ("Cars and Parties") lets the listener know that this album is going someplace new. It's like a breath of fresh air, and with creative instrumentation and a real sense of humor, Frost sounds liberated as she sings about the subject that she frequents most often: meditations on the nature of love.

As a songwriter Frost has always been ahead of the pack, composing songs with enough complexity to hook the listener early on, and enough lyrical mystery to keep our minds filling in the blanks as we replay them over and over in our heads. Somewhere between the Beatles and Elliott Smith is the zone that Frost inhabits musically, and she's never let us down when it comes to musical composition.

However, there have been times on prior releases when the guest musicians were not as polished as Frost's songs deserved. This is not the case with Wonder Wonder, which sounds more complete and full than any other Frost album to date. And yet, unlike some of Elliott Smith and the Beatles works, Wonder Wonder does not get bogged down in overproduction. Just enough boost is provided by the guest musicians to allow the songs on Wonder Wonder to really pop.

How long Edith Frost will remain exclusively a college radio queen is unknown. Her talent equals if not surpasses that of Carly Simon and Phoebe Snow, and Frost has already written more truly great songs than both of them combined. Too bad commercial radio today is so lifeless that an artist with talent as vast as Ms. Frost's has to remain an underground phenomenon. I am certain that the world at large would appreciate her music, lyrics, and her vocal delivery.

As a resident of New York City, I relish the line in the Wonder Wonder track, "Further," where she sings of the "brave fireman" who "reaches out" - it's comforting to be able to sing heartfully about firemen these days. It just feels right.

As it turns out, Frost's music is only close to Wright's quietest music on her first record Flightsafety. Edith Frost's voice is actually more like Julie Doiron or Lisa Germano's, with loose pitch and a distinct flavour, and her songwriting remains in a dreamy, melancholic blur, gorgeous in a tired way. The feeling is that of an artist who feels no need to show off, letting a soft bed of instruments and whisper-soft vocals speak her mind.

Forst never scales the dizzying heights of Shannon Wright's more ferocious material or baroque song structures and melodies, but there's a quiet power in the mournful cello parts, tinkling piano and drawn-out vocal murmurs of "True", the wry percussion and sarcastic vibrato singing of "Wonder Wonder", the sparsely apocalyptic, guitar distortion-coloured "The Fear", country rock in "Further", and a buoyant garage-rock romper in "Cars and Parties", which is very atypical of this record.

I don't play this record often, but it's well crafted, with good songwriting and a dark detached mood that's fascinating. Recommended for fans of brainy, unusual music.