01:00 AM EST on Friday, December 17, 2004

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Pop Music Writer

No more than a couple of days go by before another record comes out by another singer and songwriter that promises to be "deeply personal" and "powerful." It usually ends up sounding like the closing theme of an uplifting Lifetime made-for-TV movie.

But Thalia Zedek is the real thing. The former Come and Live Skull frontwoman's third solo record, Trust Not in Those Whom Without Some Touch of Madness (the title comes from a cut-and-pasted-together fortune Zedek found in a fortune cookie years ago), does the whole plumbing-the-depths-of-the-soul thing without making you feel as though you're reading someone's diary -- at their insistence.

There are two reasons for this. First, Zedek's lyrics (as well as her singing) are dramatic, emotional even, without being whiny or overly personal. By taking concrete images from the real world and real life, they're more in the blues tradition than from the singer-songwriter template. "Don't weep for the sailor who won't prostrate before a storm/ That he knew had been foretold," she sings in "Sailor." "Well, maybe you should hold her/ 'Cause your words got no power," she sings on "Ship."

Second, she and her band (violist David Michael Curry and drummer Daniel Coughlin) kick up a racket. While the album is composed of slow and mid-tempo tunes -- not a conventional rocker in the bunch -- they roll, pitch and sway, and Zedek's guitar (helped on record by pianist Mel Lederman of the band Victory at Sea) creates noisy interludes that say what the words hint at.

"The first solo [record] had lots of instruments on it," Zedek says from her home in Boston, "but it was really minimal in terms of playing. Pretty stark. And I think after playing with Dave and Daniel as a band . . . There are parts that are pretty improvised, and a lot more space for just sound, rather than structured songs."

That makes sense, given her writing process.

"I start with the music, pretty much in all cases. . . . The words come afterwards, after the song is worked out and I start hearing vocals in my head. I start recording the words that I'm hearing in my head, even though I'm not quite sure. . . .

"In the past I've tried to write stuff and fit the words to music, and it just doesn't work for me."

The blues connection is real, Zedek says.

"Last year, my brother gave me this book of blues lyrics, which is actually this really incredible book. Because I always thought of blues lyrics as being really simple, and all about the same thing. But when I saw them all written down, I thought, 'This is some really weird [stuff].' So that was a good, good thing to read."

The last song on the record, "Hell is in Hello," was the thematic centerpiece of the record, Zedek says. It starts with a woozy viola intro and a stumbling drum pattern, and feels like a cross between a murder ballad and a cabaret number, before it dissolves into a feedback-laden guitar squall that eventually dies down for the last verse. "You put a question mark by my name/ That's the same as gone," Zedek sings.

"That's a song that we had been playing for a while," she says, "and that we all really loved playing. It was one of the first songs that was written for this batch of songs, and I think it brought us a different feel that carried us for the rest of the songs."

Thalia Zedek, Alec K. Redfearn and the Eyesores, Area C and Wallpapr are at AS220, 115 Empire St., Providence, tonight at 9. Tickets are $6; call (401) 831-9327 for more information.