Edwin has "99 percent" finished the follow-up to his 1999 solo debut, "Another Spin Around The Sun". 

But while he still has some tweaking to do in the studio, he also has to select a title for the album due out in the middle of March on Sony Music Canada. 

"I've got about 150 of them, but I haven't settled on one," Edwin says. Even the first single has been decided upon: a straight-ahead rock song called "Superhoney". "Malibu," a slower number, is also being touted as a future single. 

Judging by Edwin's comments, the new album rocks. 

"I wanted to pick up the live show and have more kick-ass songs," explains the Toronto singer. "Every song that made the record, I envisioned live and how it would come off to an audience. 

"It's a good, strong rock record that's high energy, good driving music, good getting-ready-to-go-out music, if you like rock with grooves." 

Edwin has come into his own as a songwriter. Having never written his own lyrics during his time as leader of percussive rock band I Mother Earth, few (including him) had any idea the direction his own compositions would take when he embarked on a solo career in 1997. 

The resulting album, "Another Spin Around The Sun", was vibey and more pop-oriented rock than his former band's sound, spawning such singles as "Trippin'," "Hang Ten," "Alive", and "And You." 

"(The writing experience) was new to me in the sense that I didn't have a band to bounce ideas off of, but I was very confident in my songwriting ability. It was just a matter of putting it into practice," says Edwin. "You never really know what direction you're going to go in until it's done. I think songs kind of happen. It's not something that you consciously plot out." 

But Edwin had at least been thinking about the next album since he made "Another Spin". He came off the road last December and has spent the bulk of 2001 writing and demoing, both at home in Toronto and in Los Angeles. 

"I really toyed with blending different styles of music together and creating a sound, but when it all came down to it, I didn't want to be a bandwagon guy, like all of a sudden I need record-scratching and hip-hop." 

And did he try that? Yes, he admits. 

"I tried everything. We wrote like 50 songs before the first song that made the record was written. 

"I was experimenting mostly on my own, really. We wrote a lot of good songs, but the direct style of the song wasn't really where I wanted to go. There were a lot of good ideas there obviously, but I wanted an album that was more complete than the last record, in the sense that it had more of a focus, and this album definitely has an focus. It has an overall sound to the record. It doesn't sound like songs plucked off different shelves." 

As opposed to the nine co-writers on "Another Spin", Edwin collaborated with a small group of people this time around: Tawgs (ex Dunk) and Jeff "Diesel" Dalziel, the team who produced the album, and past collaborators David Martin, an in-house Sony writer, and Ruben Huizenga, who played guitar in his touring band. 

None of the lyrics delve into social or political topics. "They're more of an escape," Edwin says, adding that "Malibu" and "Let's Dance" are relationship-based, but that "The whole album is not a guy whining about relationships." 

Songs include "Impossible," "Split The Atom," "Painkiller," "High", and the curious "Firecracker," which he laughingly refers to as "Lou Reed meets Metallica." 

Production was done at Sony Music Canada's in-house studio in Toronto. It includes strings on two tracks and some programming, but nothing too unusual or out-there. "We basically focused on cool groove. That's probably the highlight: vocals and the grooves," says Edwin. 

Of the 50 or so songs Edwin wrote leading up to those selected for the album, he says there is a possibility some might be pitched to other artists or as bonus tracks on CD singles, but he has an even cooler idea. 

"What I'm thinking of doing is putting a secret code on the CD so you have access to a secret web site, and on that web site every month, there will be new things, just for people to look deeper into the project," Edwin says. 

"For example, demos of songs that didn't make the record, pictures, videos, me doing a little talking here and there, just candy on a web site, accessible to everyone who bought a CD." 

With some 130,000 albums sold of "Another Spin Around The Sun", Edwin has a solid fan base in Canada, but elsewhere, the album was released only in Germany and Holland. The singer's hopes for this new album are both artistic and capitalistic. 

"Without sounding cheeky, I would like to expand the territories that this album gets played in," he says with a laugh. 

"Obviously, I would like people who liked the first album to like this one, and hopefully more. I think that this album is definitely the next level in my career, a step up, in terms of it being a more complete work and more focused and more advanced in songwriting and song composition."

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