"Asking for Flowers" is a fourth-album masterpiece from this Canadian singer/ songwriter, filled with literate and provocative lyricism, vivid characters and cinematically engaging scenarios. Kathleen Edwards chronicles romantic turmoil in "Buffalo," "The Cheapest Key" and the title track, then turns around for such sweeter romantic paeans as "Sure As Shit" and "Scared at Night." There's the rocking, country-flavored energy of "The Cheapest Key" and "I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory." Elsewhere, she mines topical matters on the draft resister's ode "Oil Man's War," the media and environmental concerns of "Oh Canada" and "Alicia Ross," whose content was drafted from a real-life murder. After three predecessors, Edwards may be "Asking for Flowers" but we hope she'll be satisfied with well-deserved plaudits.—Gary Graff