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All Music Guide:
Having sung with such widely respected underground alternative bands as Come, Live Skull, and Uzi (among others), frontwoman Thalia Zedek has enjoyed quite a long and illustrious career. Zedek got her start in music shortly after relocating from Washington, D.C., to Boston in the late '70s, when she fronted such obscure bands as White Women and the all-female Dangerous Birds (the latter had a song, "Smile on Your Face," featured on the infamous Sub Pop 100 compilation). By 1983, Zedek had left Dangerous Birds and formed Uzi, which managed to release only a single EP, 1986's six-track Sleep Asylum, during its brief existence.
Not one to sit idle for long, Zedek was asked to join New York-based avant noise rockers Live Skull, appearing on such releases as 1987's Dusted, among a few others. By the early '90s, Zedek had left Live Skull and relocated back to Boston, where she formed Come (along with former Codeine drummer Chris Brokaw). The new band's first release was a single, "Car/Last Mistake," for Sub Pop's monthly singles club, which was followed up by such full-length releases as 1992's Eleven: Eleven, 1994's Don't Ask Don't Tell, 1996's Near Life Experience, and 1998's Gently, Down the Stream, before calling it quits.
In 1998, Zedek was invited by the Indigo Girls to join them on their multi-artist Suffragette Sessions Tour, during which Zedek tried out new material. Shortly thereafter, Zedek decided to finally head out as a solo artist, as her debut record, 2001's Been Here and Gone, showed her jumping from genre to genre (including torch songs, folk, blues, and rock). The next year, Zedek issued the You're a Big Girl Now EP on Kimchee. She moved to Thrill Jockey for 2004's Trust Not Those in Whom Without Some Touch of Madness, and for 2008's Liars and Prayers she opted for her fullest, biggest sound since the Come days.
Wikipedia:
Thalia Zedek (born 1961) is an American singer and guitarist. Active since the early 1980s, she has been a member of several notable alternative rock groups, including Live Skull and Come. Critic Heather Phares writes that Zedek's music can be defined by "the permanent, aching rasp in her voice, her guitar's bluesy bite, the startlingly clear-eyed lyrics about life and loss."
Biography
Zedek grew up in the metropolitan area of Washington, D.C. She attended Springbrook High School in Maryland, where she played clarinet in the marching band under band director Charles Sickafus. The early punk era of the late 1970s in which she came of age, and in particular Patti Smith, contributed deeply to the formation of her musical aesthetic. While still at high school, she would travel to New York with her brother, Dan Zedek (currently the editorial design director at the Boston Globe), to see Smith perform.
Zedek moved to Boston in 1979, attending Boston University for one semester before deciding to pursue a musical career instead. Her first band, the all-female White Women, broke up after a couple of years, and she formed the Dangerous Birds. This group had somewhat more success, including a single, "Smile on Your Face/Alpha Romeo", which achieved airplay on college and alternative-commercial radio; but Zedek wanted a more "violent" sound in contrast to the somewhat "girlie pop" tendencies of her Dangerous Birds bandmates. Her next project, Uzi, worked towards this aim, producing an EP, "Sleep Asylum". The EP was characterized by elusive yet subtly menacing lyrics superimposed upon lugubrious but driving instrumental tracks, featuring layers of dense, murky yet muscular guitar arrangements, blended with heady synthesizer and tape effects. However, despite the promise of "Sleep Asylum", Uzi dissolved, owing to tension between Zedek and the band's drummer, Danny Lee.
She next took the role of primary vocalist for New York City's Live Skull, a band already well established. While the album "Dusted," the first product of this collaboration, reflected an intense synergy between Zedek's vocal style and the complexly histrionic instrumental work of Live Skull, the follow-up "Positraction" floundered, and Live Skull also disbanded, due to conflicts, in 1990. By that time, Zedek had also run into problems regarding heroin addiction. Motivated to quit, she returned to Boston and the support of her friends. She soon co-founded Come, with former Codeine drummer Chris Brokaw. It was with them that she had her biggest successes, releasing four albums before the group disbanded in 2001. In that same year, she also released Been Here And Gone, her first solo project. Since then she has released two other full-length albums and several EPs.
Zedek was also a participant in the 1998 Suffragette Sessions tour, organized by the Indigo Girls. In 2006, she performed at North East Sticks Together.
In spite of limited commercial success, Zedek has been highly acclaimed by music critics throughout her career, and has arguably been deeply influential within the indie-rock realm, particularly through her influence within the prolific Boston indie scene, which has spawned many noteworthy artists. She is an "out-and-proud lesbian".
