Thalia Zedek Band
Six

There is a scene from the film The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky. Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei are in a pub; they drink beer and the radio plays "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses. This moment somehow marks the entire plot of the film and the existence and vicissitudes of the two protagonists; there are a few moments when it seems everything can happen: they let themselves be carried away by emotions and enthusiasm and travel twenty years back in time; they are young again, and in front of them, all doors are wide open. The future smiles at them. But it is a matter of moments because this will only be a dance round and in the end, they will come back to earth and to the surrounding reality. Time has passed inevitably and so are the wounds they carry inside and that cannot be healed. Or that neither wants to heal. In any case, going back in time is impossible. Those twenty years have changed everything and nothing will ever be the same again.

Twenty years change many things. Mickey Rourke says that at one point Nirvana and that "fag" Kurt Cobain came along and swept away all the music and bands of the eighties. An entire musical generation was suddenly relegated, crystallized in a specific historical phase.

There has been much debate over time about the eighties. It is a recurring discussion, because it is generally considered a decade in a negative light, but lately, it seems to be the subject of revisions and rehabilitation. This is also because probably many new "critics" experienced their golden years during that decade, and it is known that everyone would tend to consider their youth as the best years, the most historically significant. In any case, whatever the conclusions, those were the years when a taste for a certain type of glossy aesthetic spread among many things. Regarding rock music, in particular, bands and artists emerged who in some way tried to revive the figure of the "rockstar," understood as a mythical figure with an over-the-top existence. The various Guns N' Roses and Aerosmith, to name two of the most popular and typical bands of the era, openly drew inspiration from the Stones, resulting in what was ultimately a kind of parody (albeit a glossy one). They led an existence manifestly and clearly exaggerated. Brazenly flaunting their exciting life made of excesses, of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll to all listeners. Their life was a real show and this, on a purely cultural level, was a hard blow to the society of the time: the gap that separates musicians from listeners, and therefore from reality, widened irreparably and probably, in some aspects, definitively.

Of course, in those years other bands also emerged, where the more popular ones, especially in old Europe, maintained a significantly lower profile. At the level of content. Lacking this typical macho inspiration and attitude of the era, they became, on the contrary, bearers of claustrophobic content and messages. Rather than being bold and easygoing in success, accustomed to popularity, they appeared closed in on themselves and it was precisely these claustrophobic feelings and strong irritability that they transmitted and put them at an ideal communion state with listeners. Who clearly, in many cases, found it more "right" to identify with their songs than with those of rockstars who lived in a dimension that did not belong to them and could never belong to them.

The result, however, was quite frustrating overall. Because neither of these two movements truly gave expression and scope to the personalities of an entire generation and, when in this context, between the end of the eighties and, much more exponentially, at the beginning of the nineties with the release of Nevermind, Nirvana emerged; it was then that that fag Kurt Cobain was welcomed as if he were a messiah.

Kurt Cobain's figure broke with all that was the decade's previous aesthetic. He, in fact, appeared manifestly fragile; his physical structure was slender and almost androgynous in appearance. He appeared an ephebe, a sort of hermaphrodite and vulnerable as if he were Jesus and, like Jesus, he was crucified. Only after three days, he did not rise again at all; perhaps because he feared that, rather than changing the world, in the end, it would be this world that permanently changed him. He was too involved in the success and everything happening to him and, in the end, it matters little whether he was killed or took his own life. What counts is that unfortunately he is no longer there. Nonetheless, his songs and profound sensitivity made a mark and were destined to somehow change all the music that would follow in the next twenty years and up to today.

The impact of Nirvana's music and Kurt Cobain on the scene was devastating. Was it understood or not by all who listened and bought his records; who attended his concerts; Nirvana's success was in any case planetary and universally acknowledged; the sensitivity Kurt Cobain expressed in the lyrics of his songs and even on stage where he exorcised his great fears and inner sadness with manifestations wrongly described over time as acts of rebellion and pure anger, left its mark. It garnered sharing at all levels and his success continued even after his bloody death.

After Nirvana's boom, hundreds, thousands of bands were born all over the United States. Of course, there have always been hundreds and thousands of bands, but for all those that came after, Nirvana and Kurt Cobain were a milestone, an inspiration. Among these were (and maybe there will be, given the possibility of a reunion) the Boston-based band Come, featuring guitarist Chris Brokaw (already drummer of Codeine and over the years repeatedly involved in various solo and non-solo music projects - among them also Dirtmusic) and especially the vocalist Thalia Zedek.

Come, whose label Thrill Jockey has recently reissued their masterpiece album Eleven:Eleven, never achieved great fame in the US, and consequently in Europe. As mentioned, in fact, the eighties had definitively created an unbridgeable gap between musicians and the large generic mass of listeners. Who had now become lazy and generally uninterested; resigned to their role, absolutely marginal, as mere spectators; uselessly mirroring themselves in existences and characters far removed from their reality. A social system was affirming based on the drugged culture of image worship and where it had become practically impossible for a band like Come to establish themselves with the general public.

Their sound was a mix of the hardest sounds typical of Nirvana themselves and those, instead, of other bands and artists who have always demonstrated a certain taste and predisposition for blues music. E.g. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Lydia Lunch. The band's activities continued through the nineties until abruptly halting at the beginning of the new century. At that point, Thalia Zedek dedicated herself to a production of solo albums and, from 2004, the year she released the album Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness, she began a valuable collaboration with the record label Thrill Jockey. A partnership not at all random, considering that the Chicago label has historically distinguished itself as one of the best in the North American continent, for a particular taste and preference and care for artists who stand out as strongly representative of important social phenomena and within that large and gigantic country, at least geographically, which would be the United States of America.

As far as I'm concerned, her previous album, Via, which I list among the best albums released in 2013, was a real revelation. Until then, indeed, I was blind. I was blind because, in my infinite smallness, I mostly thought it was too difficult to find and find oneself in the contents of songs written by a female vocalist. But albums like this, Via, or that of Scout Niblett, not coincidentally another fantastic woman, I think can teach everyone something about themselves. Regardless of your sex and age, your social belonging, and the place where you were born, where you live.

So, now, here's Six, this extended play released in the early months of the new year 2014. Meanwhile, it's worth saying that, despite it is an ep, the duration of the work is not at all as short as it should be by routine. Besides, today, it probably makes even less sense than yesterday to distinguish between lp and ep. The habit of listening to music in all possible formats has definitively detached us from the bond and constraint of "format" and this, as far as I am concerned, is a good thing. Also on a conceptual level: in this sense, there are no longer any limits to an artist's freedom of expression. There are no longer temporal limits, that's what I mean. At the level of contents, instead, if Via was a revelation, Six constitutes for the listener a true return to a sort of ideal placenta, where you can ideally be lulled by the melodies and the hypnotic voice of Thalia Zedek. An ability, that of hypnotizing listeners, particularly marked in tracks like "Julia Said" and "Flathand" and where, wanting to draw a parallel, we could consider that, if Thalia Zedek were Italian, then she would probably be Nada. Both possess great strength and both are perhaps too often too little understood and considered by the large mass of listeners. The album closes with "Afloat," a long psychedelic journey lasting over seven minutes that alone would be worth the ticket price.

Clearly a lesbian, in today's international music scene and in the social scene as a whole, a woman like Thalia Zedek appears light-years away from all those that can be typical stereotypes linked to female figures. Of course, she is not a groupie nor a rock priestess as Nico once might have been; she is not a woman of cleavages and undulations, nor is she one of those super women-managers, the mythical figure according to which the woman would finally have emancipated herself today. Thalia Zedek's greatness, in fact, lies in the fact she is simply a woman. A strong woman in all possible meanings. Musicians like her show us today how it is still possible and still makes sense to make authentic rock music without being slaves to the culture of image and afflicted by any celebrity mania. Not even a slave to herself, with Six, Thalia Zedek shows us how she, I and all of you, we are all the same; that we have no gap to fill between who we are and who we would like to become, but we should simply be.