I’d give you the rundown on Edith Frost, but really there’s no way I could do it better than this Chicago Reader column. Strangely enough, I’d been wondering about when her next album was coming out, and the Reader column leads with the reason why we haven’t seen any new material since 2001. Guess I’m not the only one waiting.

Demos didn’t make it to the 2004 review for two reasons. The first is it’s all old stuff, and early versions of already-released material to boot. The real reason, of course, is I forgot; going through the stack of CDs I’d bought doesn’t help when you’ve also got downloaded albums. Which is one of the great things about Demos�Frost, in her infinite wisdom, has released the album as a free download via Comforty Stand Recordings. This demo version of “Walk On The Fire” is one of the choice cuts.

I happen to be familiar with the buzzy, rougher final version of “Walk On The Fire,” but in most cases I’m hearing these songs for the first time, as demos rather than album versions. I imagine a lot of people will be in the same boat, hearing Edith Frost for the first time through these early versions. Some will probably be disappointed at first to find that the serene, dreamy atmosphere of Demos doesn’t quite carry over to the studio albums. But the albums have many charms of their own, and it won’t take long for people to find them. Demos, then, manages the feat of complimenting the studio albums while standing on its own as a cohesive work. Definitely worth the download.

The lead track off of Mirah’s 2002 album Advisory Committee stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the album—and, indeed, everything she’s done before or since. It was like the entire score to an alternate-universe western movie crammed into five minutes of lush, expansively produced music. Backed by a string section and thundering percussion, “Cold Cold Water” was a bold statement that would’ve worked better had the rest of Advisory Committee not run in the other direction—equal to the strengths of “Cold Cold Water” but oddly disconnected.

The stripped-down version found on the single is illuminating for two reasons. First, it’s a great example of what Mirah can do minus the production of Phil Elvrum, whose distinctive sound can be heavy-handed at times. Mirah has been working with Elvrum for a long time, and we haven’t really heard anything so spare and unadorned since Storageland, an EP of an entirely different and altogether sunnier flavour. Second, while it doesn’t have the icy sheen of the rest of Advisory Committee, the demo version does sit better in sequence with the other tracks. The demo doesn’t lose anything in its barebones configuration, an indication of just how good the writing is.