Three years ago teenager Nika Roza Danilova arrived upon the fringes of the pop-music world with a voice as big as her 4'11" frame is small, and a sound as exotic as her Wisconsin home seems Rockwellian. Clear from the beginning was that this young, dimunitive, mid-westerner is an unmistakeable force to be reckoned with.
At first encounter Ms. Danilova's Zola Jesus moniker alone carves out a place of iconoclasm and mythology in the pantheon of rock 'n roll history. Sonically, she matches that initial impression with a 21st century goth-electronic sound full of operatic drama, soaring vocals, and dissonance. Through the sounds and images of her first several releases Danilova has created a well-considered narrative of evolution for her goth-goddess image. Zola Jesus came to us a murky, dark and distorted voice of catharsis and decay portrayed that way consistently through imagery as well as her recordings. A slew of steady releases has allowed her to slowly lift the veil of obfuscation from her lyrics, persona, and sound. Holding constant the dramatic, gothy feel of her overall aesthetic, each release seems to bring her powerful voice and personality closer to the forefront of increasingly cleaner compositions.
Before even listening to the album there are two indications of Danilova's arrival upon a new phase of her career's evolution. Previously she has always been visually captured out of focus, in all dark colors, and even literally covered in sludge. However, Ms. Danilova appears on the cover of Conatus in front of a white backdrop, dressed in all white, even her usually-black hair bleached blonde, and in crystalline high-resolution. Then there's the album title Conatus, translated: the will to keep on, to move forward. It's quite a message to send fans of a gothy chanteuse, but there is nothing here to fear. There is continuity, visually in the veiling of her face, and sonically in the ever-present drama in her voice and atmospherics in production. The real changes lie in the translation of the album title. No longer a vessel of catharsis for a heart and mind weighed down by the inevitability of decay and loss, Zola Jesus is a celebrant of the beauty of chaos and that same process of decay. That perspective is evident in the quality of a more controlled chaos in production, increased elements of confidence and accomplishment in her already magnificent vocals, and the laying bare of the underlying pop-accessability that's always been lurking in her songs.
The album is streaming here, and will be officially released on September 26th, 2011.
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