image from a set in London last August, by Howard Melnyczuk It's freezing outside, the kind of brutal cold that makes the skin of your forehead ache as you push through the night air. You can't find the recently re-opened venue right away, because its door is around the corner from where you thought it would be, hidden in plain sight. Up a flight of stairs, where a doorman greets you with superfluous cordiality, you say "I'm here for Eddi Front" and you can already hear her singing. The doorman explains to you that she's been playing for ten minutes already, and that coats may be checked right around the corner in the vestibule. The vestibule leads to a stunning show space taller than it is wide, cluttered with candlelit tables, decorated with flowered maroon wallpaper, heavy velvet curtains and gilded moulding framing the stage upon which Ivana Carrescia, otherwise known as Eddi Front, sits strumming a guitar with bashful bearing but direct gaze, her wispy frame clad in all black, her black hair hanging in her eyes. And you look through the dark, searching for a particular face, but the face isn't there - only slightly different versions of the face you expect to see, like dreams in which the familiarity of your lover is inaccessible to your subconcious but still makes strange visitations, slightly off true. You see someone with posture just like his, soft hair sloping to a gentle curve around the shoulders. But it's not him. So you focus for a minute on the performer, who is poised to become the 'next big thing', thanks to a beguiling persona that's both fragile and hints at the possibility of violent, wild combustion, thanks to a voice that's tremulous and angelic but spits words that are at times angry or terse or forlorn. She puts down the guitar and a piano player to the side of the stage helps her finish the set, which expands on the four songs she's thus far put out into the world with new material that is as lovely and as peculiar and as melancholy as those that drew you into the warm heart of this room on such a frigid evening. Eddi Front sings songs that are just like that: a sort of frozenness permeates them, but then there is a warmth, a hope, a nostalgia for times past and things lost. Her songs are like maroon flowered wallpaper and black hair in eyes and searching the crowd for a face that isn't there and will not come. They are slightly inaccurate dream-versions of lovers. She is the piano player with fingers depressing his black keys over and over, lost in his most mournful tones. She is like the burlesque that followed the show - seemingly exposed, but obscured by theatrical artifice until you cannot tell where Ivana ends and Eddi begins. She is you, waiting at a table for nothing, feeling your heart shatter. You remember her words in "Gigantic", with which she closed the show: I've always been slow to get off of some drugs, to let go of some loves. I'll crawl out of this hole soon enough. Take my ring off. And eventually, you stand up, put on your sweater and your coat and your gloves, and make your way out into the frozen city once again.

SHOW REVIEWEddi Front at The Slipper Room, 1/24/13