Taking its poetically incoherent title from an inspired fortune cookie message, Trust Not Those in Whom Without Some Touch of Madness finds Thalia Zedek once again fearlessly sifting through past mistakes and old regrets in an attempt to find some guidance for the future. In her previous work with bands like Uzi, Live Skull, and Come, and now as a solo artist, Zedek has never shied away from mining some seriously desperate emotional terrain, which may be one reason why her formidable but inhospitable body of work remains so under-appreciated.
Unwary newcomers will find little to comfort them here, as Zedek returns to the same spare instrumental line-up she used on 2002's You're a Big Girl Now. Her voice has matured to a fine saw-toothed rasp, and carries with it the echoes of every hard minute through which she's lived. Violist David Curry has replaced Come's brilliant Chris Brokaw as Zedek's chief musical foil, and his spirited, evocative playing encircles these songs like a cloud of devilish smoke. (Cello, piano and pedal steel also make brief but crucial appearances in accompaniment to Zedek's voice and guitar.) Though the musicians occasionally make overt references to traditional blues, C&W;, or Appalachian folk, the proceedings here generally breathe in the same nebulous, turbulent atmosphere that has fueled groups like the Bad Seeds or The Dirty Three.
Zedek has never been drawn to simple verse/chorus/verse structures, and at first glance her melodies can seem sprawling and unwieldy. After a couple careful listens, though, the ingenious latticework of songs like "Ship" or "Evil Hand" slowly unfold themselves to leave a powerful and lasting impression. Nearly every track features a series of fitful crescendos that emerge from the raging dialogues between Curry's viola, the restless drumming of Daniel Curry, and Zedek's guitar. (On top of everything else she's become quite a unique and underrated guitar stylist.)
"I don't know what memories are for/ We just go back and forth," Zedek sings on "Bone", one of several harrowing portraits of relationships caught in a repetitive cycle of destruction. Throughout the album she continues to question the value of memory, particularly if we persistently fail to heed the lessons of the past. In the song "Virginia" she advises, "Don't ever look back... you'll lose everything if you do," and on "Sailor" she displays little sympathy for those who brazenly ignore the warnings they've been given: "Do not weep for the sailor who won't prostrate before the storm/ We all knew it had been foretold there was red sky in the morn."
But still she returns again and again to explore occasions of past guilt or remorse like worrying about a loose tooth, and in so doing she draws some pretty bleak conclusions: "It's all over now/ Whatever you've found is what you will die with." It's not exactly uplifting stuff, and as with melancholic peers like Vic Chesnutt or Richard Buckner the relentless darkness of her material is likely to keep her relegated to the status of cult favorite. Thankfully, here she allows her guitar and Curry's viola to get the final word, sending the closing "Hell Is in Hello" sailing in a cathartic maelstrom of noise and feedback, hopefully purging away the demons of memory once and for all.
