With a career spanning over 30 years. Thalia Zedek is no spring chicken.
She has worked with abrasive grunge bands Uzi, Live Skull Come and others, bands so deep underground that I'd not previously heard of any of them. This is less surprising in the case of Uzi as they released only one EP!
Since 2001, after Come disbanded, Zedek has been making music under her own name. Her decision to cover Dylan's You're A Big Girl Now on an EP of that name in 2002 suggests that she has grown out of her early rebellion but her latest album for Chicago's Thrill Jockey label shows she definitely hasn't gone soft.
The ten songs of experience may be bruised, brooding and bluesy yet the melancholy mood does not denote weakness. Themes of loss, isolation, domestic violence and vulnerability are handled with a maturity and restraint that makes the emotional punch all the more powerful.
Instead of raging over a full-blooded rock band, the working quintet on Eve includes David Michael Curry (viola) and Mel Lederman (piano) and this instrumentation helps lends an elegant and elegiac quality to many of the tunes.
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In Afloat, the seven minute opening track, she is philosophical about flotsam from the past: "what we left behind, someone else will find washed ashore".
In 360° she advocates letting go of negative emotions and revelling in the strength that this produces. Try Again is all about moving forward without shame.
Regrets, she's had a few, but she is ready to discard any burdens on an album which has a controlled air of a woman who has passed through the worst and come out stronger.
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