Perfect Vision

Thalia Zedek is an artist of immutable stature and unceasing vitality. The legendary songwriter’s fery voice and frank lyricism give her songs emotional potency and stark beauty. Zedek is able to distill complex events into simple, clear, and at times monumentally weighty moments with a singular grace. Through ballads or bluster, Zedek imbues her music with unguarded honesty. Perfect Vision examines the anxiety and pain of rising divisions between people both physical and ideological. Zedek transmutes fervor and resilience into sobering laments, while her lush arrangements wrap the listener in an often complex emotional message.

Perfect Vision follows the 2018 Fighting Season, created in the midst of growing tensions across the U.S. On Fighting Season Zedek sought resistance, where on Perfect Vision she searches for clarity during a time of exponential isolation and doubt. Every challenge and sadness Zedek forces us to see is met in equal measure by her defant guitar and dissenting voice, a torch illuminating a path for the listener to navigate through the darkness.

Lockdowns allowed Zedek to take more time working on arrangements as well as to collaborate remotely with artists from across the country. Zedek recorded the core of the album with the veritable rhythm section of bassist Winston Braman and drummer Gavin McCarthy (also of Zedek’s E and Karate) bringing a propulsive punch. As the trio recorded at Machines With Magnets with engineer Seth Manchester, friends old and new remotely recorded their parts feshing out Zedek’s vision and arrangements. Pedal steel guitarist Karan Zarkisian buoys the steady swagger of “Cranes” whose sublime melodic lines are seemingly in an intimate conversation between friend with Zedek. Brian Carpenter’s trumpet harmonies punctuate the incendiary “From the Fire” with fares of Eastern European brio. On the waltzing “Smoked” and climactic album closer “Tolls,” Alison Chesley’s (Helen Money) cello bolsters David Michael Curry’s elegantly restrained lines. Mel Lederman added fnal touches of piano and back up harmonies.

Zedek and Manchester completed work on the album on January 6th, 2021, as the U.S. Capitol was under insurrection. Perfect Vision is an album fully willing to see and acknowledge the insidious forces of the modern world. Zedek brings considerable skills as a musician and as a groundbreaking advocate for both women in music and LGBTQ rights to face emotional and political obstacles with unblinking, steadfast determination. The sharp and diverse songs across Perfect Vision stand as profoundly refective, moving anthems to purging malevolence.