Even the inconsistency on Nicole Edwards’ new record is consistent for her.

“I’ve never been a one-genre girl,” says the Whitehorse singer, whose fifth album, Genre Bender, will be released Friday.

Among the 15 songs on the record, listeners will find everything from folk and rock, to jazz and tango.

Edwards says the diversity isn’t something she did as a challenge. She didn’t even really do it intentionally.

“Each song I write, there’s a message that I want to deliver. There’s different genres that deliver that message,” she says.

A song that might come off as cheesy if it were folk gets a different power as a rock song, she says.

Some things work better one way than another. That’s just how the songs developed on Genre Bender. It usually is for Edwards, whose first record (2001’s On With My Day) was similarly diverse.

One thing that has changed over the years is that Edwards is a co-producer this time around.

She says it allowed her to really focus on what served each song. To go back and tinker, taking things away here, or adding them there.

For instance, she decided to hire a horn section and arrange harmonies on a few songs – luxuries she’s never enjoyed in the past.

The added expense meant it took a bit longer to record than previous albums, but Edwards was OK with stretching it out over three years.

It allowed her to enjoy the process, something that’s important to her.

Edwards has scleroderma, a chronic skin disease.

She says she takes things at a slower pace than she used to. She likes to focus on quality of life.

If it moves too fast, she doesn’t get the same enjoyment out of individual experiences, and that includes making music. She prefers to take it easy and soak it up.

“If it gets stressful, it’s counterproductive.”

Edwards says the 31 musicians who play on the record were accommodating of that pace.

It’s a level of support that’s been consistent with her experience of the Yukon since she moved here from Ontario in 1997.

At the time, Edwards had no job here. She was a musician who had always wanted to live in the North.

She says she was amazed by the welcome she got.

Within six months, venues were advertising her as “the Yukon’s own Nicole Edwards.” It was immediately welcoming. A place she was automatically part of.

Many of the musicians she’s met over the years appear on the record, though some outsiders participated as well.

Parts of Genre Bender were recorded at The Cottage – an Ontario studio owned by Scott Merritt (who has produced albums for Fred Eaglesmith).

The majority though, was recorded in the Yukon, at Old Crow Recording and Green Needle Records.

While Edwards has no immediate plans to get back in the studio, she does have more songs in the bank right now.

With the release of every album, she thinks it could be the last one. But she’s been wrong before.

“The wheels keep turning and the ideas keep flowing,” she says. “So who knows?”

Genre Bender’s release party includes a concert at 8 p.m. Friday at the Yukon Arts Centre.