Perfect Vision

Thalia Zedek doesn't appear to be someone who dwells on the unfortunate, but she clearly has her eyes open and is troubled by what she's seeing in America in the late 2010s and early 2020s. The country's growing division in the Trump era was the unifying theme of her 2018 album Fighting Season, and 2021's Perfect Vision doubles down on those concerns while introducing anxiety exacerbated by the fear and isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. While some artists face these concerns with righteous rage, Zedek's approach here is lean, wiry, and thoughtful while tempered by a jittery caution. This music is the work of someone too smart to panic but not immune to lingering unease, and what Zedek brings us is all the more articulate for the space she's left in the arrangements. The songs generate a sense of vexation through the interplay between Zedek's plain-spoken guitar figures, with the interjections of piano, pedal steel, and cello, and the unobtrusive, rock-solid rhythm section that holds this music in place. Her lyrics and vocals on songs like "Cranes," "Binoculars," and "From the Fire" are a vivid depiction of the claustrophobia that engulfs her characters (some of whom may or may not be Zedek herself), but Perfect Vision never feels like an album that gives in to despair. As dark as the material may be, it acknowledges a grim reality while subtly reminding us why we need to stand up against it, and the more forceful, full-bodied attack of "Queasy" and "Revelation Time" is curiously liberating in this context. Even more than Fighting Season, Perfect Vision is art that offers a hard but honest look at the world and the times that gave it life, and its evocative power will still speak clearly long after other crises have replaced those keeping Zedek awake in 2021. ~ Mark Deming