Send "Zola Jesus " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Tinymixtapes |
 Nika Roza Danilova, a.k.a. Zola Jesus, has shed much of the distortion and metallic textural meanderings that wreathed her 2009 full-length The Spoils. While her industrial and avant-pop-noise influences presided there — Throbbing Gristle, Coil, even The Residents — the Stridulum EP heard her soaring, strong operatic voice brought further to the fore. Danilova's latest continues to move in this direction, polishing up the scoured sonic spaces of the cold Wisconsin rustbelt to present lusher, but no less cold, pastures. What has been mapped out is by no means pastoral. Not at all. Imagine, rather, an isolated cavern set into a bluff overlooking such a prospect: a landscape green but still toxic, invisible, in hibernation, fringed by the cities of "synthesized stimulation" of the literally post-industrial Wisconsin rustbelt that Danilova refers to in interviews. Continuing this opening up, as if Danilova and her music were emerging from wintering under a blanket of noise, Valusia's vocals and often non-synthesized orchestrations (Cult of Youth's Christiana Key's violin on "Poor Animal" and a real-life piano on "Lightstick") are forward and immediate. Despite her extra-emphatic vocal presence, she remains committed to bedding her tracks in drum machines and synth, be it the enveloped whispers of white noise and martial drum programs of the opener, or the Faith-era Cure string patches that underpin the memorable, dare I say anthemic, album favorite "Sea Talk." It would be trite to say that the difference between the frank humanity of her voice and the insistent electronic pulses and washes expresses some kind of contradiction or accord between the organic and inorganic, but say it I must, because on that level Valusia works to broach this — characteristically apocalyptic — possibility. In a sense, this is old hat. Valusia is early-4AD terrain. To criticize Zola Jesus in this way is by now old hat, too, but it's unavoidable. In Zola Jesus, one hears The Cocteau Twins, the twin-barrels of elegantly electronic-augmented instrumentation and an absolutely singular voice. However, while Danilova certainly possesses a vocal grandiosity that recalls Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard and that band's doom-and-hope sensibility, the lilt and glossolalia of the Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser is replaced with stridency and directness of lyrical expression; Dead Can Dance's varied palette finally passed over in favor of a more consistent — or one-dimensional — eyes-heavenward attitude and musical scope....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| By all accounts, the last thing Zola Jesus' new EP should feel like is a victory lap. After throwing her hat in the nu-goth ring with last year's debut full-length, The Spoils, Valusia comes as the third release Nika Roza Danilova has given us this year-- two EPs plus a noisy collaboration with LA Vampires. Thankfully, Zola Jesus here return to the best of those records, the Stridulum EP, which found the band pushing for something both forceful and accessible; Valusia follows the same formula, upping the emotional ante with stirring pop ballads and mascara-smeared anthems. All this, and it only accounts for four of the 10 new songs we've heard from her in 2010. For someone who is already having one hell of a year (she also just completed her undergraduate degree and turned 21), you wouldn't suspect that the addition of those four songs-- three of which have already appeared on an expanded, import-only edition of Stridulum-- would make much of a difference. But here we are. Valusia kicks in the door with a pair of tracks that rank among her most dynamic. Opener "Poor Animal" ratchets up the intensity, taking a simple 4/4 drumbeat and riding it over it aching synths and a shimmering final act where a single violin (courtesy of Cult of Youth's Christiana Key) leads the driving build. It's a triumphant first impression, illuminated by Danilova's tide-shifting wail. "Tower" can't quite outmuscle "Poor Animal" (and not for lack of trying), but it more clearly demonstrates where Danilova sees herself right now. Played out like part of a tortured Rapunzel fantasy, its industrial lurch and rising, orchestral synths are sapped of their charge only when backdropped against her towering vocal. Dropping everything but a spare drum, she sings, "And it feels like I'm the only one." This isn't the first time Danilova has explored feelings of isolation, but here it's a striking, confusing moment: How could someone who sounds like she has a fucking army behind her feel so alone?...full text |
| Sputnikmusic |
| "Goth is back." That utterance has been frequently employed when talking about Zola Jesus, the solo project of Wisconsin native Nika Roza Danilova. Danilova certainly seems to play the part of your stereotypical 'goth'; when she was 14, she started telling people at school to call her Zola Jesus - "so they would stop talking to me," she explained in a recent interview, adding, "I don't like humans very much." Her debut LP, The Spoils, was a defiantly messy affair, filled with grim, lo-fi atmospherics that repeatedly threatened to swallow Danilova up whole - but they never did. No matter how sonically dense they were, the songs still had Danilova's immensely powerful voice to hold them down. That demonstrative voice became the focal point of Danilova's work with the release of Stridulum earlier this year. The EP was a significantly cleaner affair, abandoning the more grimy textures of The Spoils in favor of ominous synth tones and insistent beats. It was an impressive leap forward for the 21-year-old, but the songs were ultimately slight and unfocused, the melodies too limp to hold much interest. With Valusia, her newest EP, Danilova addresses those flaws; the record's four songs all show tremendous musical growth. Opener "Poor Animal" is more welcoming than anything Zola Jesus has ever released before, notably including a live string section alongside neon streaks of sound. With its four-on-the-floor beat, it's practically a dance track - albeit one darkly colored by the lyric "we are all delusional". It's notable that Valusia is yet another step away from the darkness and fog that defined Danilova's early work. But her sound is no less compelling as it gets more accessible; on the contrary, the warmer melodies on these songs make Zola Jesus' sound more immediately gripping. The lyrics are less inane this time around - rather than singing about how "it's not easy to fall in love," Danilova is asking questions. Not particularly tough questions, mind you, but questions nonetheless; on "Sea Talk", she bellows affectingly, "Do you understand that I don't have a choice 'cause.. do you want to know?" Surrounded by lush harmonies (in major keys, no less!) and a propulsive beat, Danilova sounds simultaneously unsure of herself and completely comfortable in her own skin. Lines are repeated deliberately and take on a haunting quality; on the startlingly bare closer "Lightsick", Danilova sings "when the lights go out on us", over and over. She lands on that last word with splendid fervor, and we are left wondering if she's ecstatic or heartbroken....full text |
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