Singer-songwriters who take the confessional route run the risk of alienating listeners when they invite them into their psyches. Personality problems and moral inconsistencies are bound to be noticed. That's why so many artists hide their nakedness behind self-deprecation.
On her debut album, "Failer," Kathleen Edwards, a 24-year-old Canadian who grew up abroad, confesses without the aid of emotional armor. The thing you notice about her singing is its vulnerability, but it's not the hesitant sort that you associate with singer-songwriters. Her voice is all there, bold and in your face, but at the same time it's as fragile as spun sugar.
Listening to Edwards is like listening to someone who doesn't know her house is burning down. She doesn't dress up addiction in "Mercury." She simply repeats a line that indicates what a routine her (or someone's) drug habit has become: "Let's go get high/Mercury is parked outside." When a record company rep comes to see her show in "One More Song the Radio Won't Like," she won't stop drinking long enough to listen to his plan, because she knows she won't like it. "No one likes a girl who won't sober up" is probably his line, though in Edwards' songs it's sometimes difficult to tell whose point of view is being expressed.