Edwards intrigues but struggles to connect

Alt-country singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards opened her House of Blues concert Saturday with a joke about feeling right at home, because she didn’t nearly sell out shows in her native Ottawa either. The set did have a midnight starting time, but the relatively sparse attendance was still surprising considering the buzz that’s been building since Edwards’ debut album, “Failer,” was released in January.

Edwards, 23, played guitar with her backing trio, offering about an hour’s worth of the deceptively genteel songs that have won her attention everywhere from Austin’s recent South by Southwest music festival to the pages of Rolling Stone magazine to taste-making public radio station KCRW-FM (89.9).

But the frequent comparisons to Lucinda Williams proved premature. She and the band played well, and her tunes were intriguing, but she remained distant, never fully inhabiting her edgy characters. The music wasn’t Wilco-esque alt-country, but more earthy pop-country a la Kasey Chambers.

Yet it felt vague, as even the smoother melodies lacked real hooks amid a featureless mid-tempo wash of acoustic and electric guitars that often became somnambulant.

“Hockey Skates” was catchy, and the metaphor for staying in the game of romance was certainly quirky, if not universal.

Still, such numbers as “Westby,” in which an underage girl sardonically reflects on her affair with a married man, had a refreshing frankness and an understated sense of mischief.

And “Six O’Clock News” was about as traditionally traumatic a country tune as one could want, complete with insanity, death, star-crossed love, unexpected pregnancy and a tearful, tragic ending.