musicAddicted

Some voices sound as though they are predestined for a particular style of music, the colour, scale and idiosyncrasies of their timbre associating with something that has come before and unconsciously prompting categorisation. With the best of them, though, then comes something strange, unheard and new that nullifies this automatic process. Take PJ Harvey, whose ability to shift from guttural rawness to piercing highs has given her freedom to adapt to any form that takes her fancy, or Karin Dreijer Andersson, whose high-pitched, grotesque wail combined with her freeform phrasing gives her dark art a thrilling, intentional mystery. Nika Roza Danilova, better known as Zola Jesus, also has one of those voices. If there is something like a destiny, Danilova’s velvety alto was intended for dark, highly emotive ideas that bear a piece of tragedy, a quart of resistance and, crucially, a shred of wonderful decadence. But there’s also a strong impulsiveness and truth to be found in the melodrama of her songs, and it’s this which makes her music somehow more honest and easier to identify with.

Danilova’s voice is also the one thing that inextricably connects the quite different styles of her three albums to date: a thread pulled taut thorough the gritty lo-fi moods of The Spoils to the more polished goth-electro sheen of Stridulum II to the transparent electro-pop of Conatus. And just as her musical focus has moved from the untreated sound of uneasy home recordings to professional and thoughtful production, so has Danilova’s vocal expression grown and matured. With the Stridulum project having found an interesting niche within an alternative pop scene always hungry for a balance between stylised art and raw spontaneity, Danilova compounded her appeal in interviews with nods to philosophical doctrines, other intellectual works and low-budget European art-flicks. Conatus goes one step further, incorporating philosophy into its very name, and the album as a whole can be interpreted in terms of endeavour, a natural human inclination towards not only living but to growing and thriving.

It’s through this theme that Danilova manifests her latest metamorphosis, for the nihilism of The Spoils and the existential doubt of Stridulum are all but gone; logically, Danilova’s sound has inched further along the spectrum from dark to light. Exceptions to this rule are just two: the opening, minute-long ‘Swords’ and lead single ‘Vessel’. Listening to ‘Swords’ is like sweeping through a gallery of sketches of potential songs pinned to the walls with grim echoes of Danilova’s voice and pre-programmed percussion, while ‘Vessel’ deposits itself somewhere between the smooth, synthetic elegance of Depeche Mode in their prime and the raw black energy of re-invented Portishead. ‘Vessel’ is also the only piece on Conatus where the inner darkness reaches an intense and satisfactory peak in the form of a beat-led breakdown. From a musical perspective, the rest is much more tender and smoother.

Read the whole review at Wears The Trousers and listen to Zola Jesus’ actual single Seekir.