The characters that flash through Kathleen Edwards' new album don't face the boy-girl dilemmas common to pop songs.There's the young girl about to be murdered who mourns every question she'll never have answered in life. A woman exasperated by the endless responsibilities of caring for a family member deformed by mental illness. A young man who risks arrest by dodging the draft. And two rival bandmates, one of whom constantly upstages the other with his effortless cool.
"Boy-girl dynamics are only interesting for so long," Edwards says. "I really tried to stay away from that, to write something new."
Edwards' efforts to freshen up the subject matter appropriate to a song made her stand out from the start. Her writing shows a strong sense of plot and character, and often is marked by a bracing lack of sentimentality.
In a key cut from her last work - 2005's "Back to Me" - a woman watches a TV-news report showing her criminal lover facing down a squad of police officers who have him cornered. Instead of fretting over his fate, the woman sneers to herself, "Maybe 20 years in state [prison] will change your mind."
No wonder many observers have commented that Edwards doesn't "write like a girl."
"When I first started writing songs, my influences were male," says Edwards, 29. "I have no intention of becoming the next Jewel. I don't want to be airy-fairy."
There's little chance of that on "Asking for Flowers," out Tuesday. Not only does Edwards use its muscular lyrics to explore some hard characters, the music is her most assertive to date.
She credits "99.5%" of that to producer Jim Scott, known for his work with the seminal alterna-country rock band Whiskeytown.
"I bought their 'Stranger's Almanac' album when it came out," Edwards says. "It was the early time of my discovering noncommercial music. I would listen to it all the time and look at [Scott's] name on the back cover. That [I] would [work with him] is a dream come true."
As usual, Edwards' latest folk-rock songs draw key inspiration from Tom Petty and Neil Young. She even has Petty's keyboardist, Benmont Tench, playing on the album.
Edwards' admiration for lead Heartbreaker Petty isn't confined to his music. "He doesn't bend in what he believes in," she says. "That he has never sold his music to commercials - there are very few classic rock artists who haven't. I can understand wanting to expose yourself to a new audience by having a song in a Nokia commercial. But what the f- do I care about Nokia phones? To me, there's an ethical conflict."
