After being the blogger’s delight at the end of last year, Zola Jesus is back. The 2010 album, Stridulum II, was a fine piece in a niche sort of way, even if it’s wailing risked getting caught up in the tail end of the witch house storm in a teacup.
The new record, Conatus, represents that thing so beloved of old style communist regimes, the ‘great leap forward’. It had all gone a bit quiet in Camp Zola, then all of a sudden there was a fizz and a buzz from the festival circuit that great things were afoot, and the spies weren’t wrong.
The central core, the gravitational pull of the record, is that voice, grown large in confidence. It’s paradoxically fitting that something so massive should come from this 4’11”, tiny framed and previously insular figure. But the thing that makes this special is what revolves in the orbit of Nika’s voice. Yes, it’s fair to call it goth-inflected, but in the 11 tracks are lush harmonies and piano pieces to go alongside the dry-ice drenched melodrama. As well as launching the album, Souterrain are about to release a second single from it – ‘Seekir’ – which improbably and satisfyingly segues a tribal chant across into a disco beat. The whole thing has the sort of echoing emotional space that can be best described as walking across a darkened and dusty Hollywood sound stage, only to somehow and mysteriously find yourself in the real desert. If I had to give it a lazy phrase of description, it might be something like ‘Florence fronting the XX’. I’ve had this on heavy rotation for a week now and it’s the gift that keeps on giving, getting better and revealing more each time round.
Zola Jesus is the solo project of Nika Roza Danilova. There is a live band involved, but it’s been all Nika’s vision from back when she was churning this out from her bedroom in the mid-west. She’s playing a sprinkling of U.K. dates in November, and if you want to catch them live, I’d get your skates on – at the album launch show in London this week it’s so over-subscribed that even the usual press credentials won’t get you in.
…..and here to listen to right now is ‘Seekir’….
Zola Jesus – Seekir by souterraintransmissions
http://youtu.be/tYVi81IATZU
