Release Date: October 4, 2011
From the dark and eerie depths of experimental, indie goth electronica comes Zola Jesus—aka Nika Roza Danilova—here releasing her third studio album, Conatus. Zola Jesus has come to resent the idea of her music being coined as “goth rock,” but because of the creepy tension between languid string instruments, straight industrial percussion, and Danilova’s haunted vocals within each and every song on this extremely cohesive album, the continued application of that term in describing her music is pretty inevitable.
Constantly teetering just on the edge of approachability, Danilova toys with the notion of pop music by spreading strange details throughout Conatus. There is constant warping and pitch-bending in all of the strings, while Zola Jesus’ voice anchors the melodic element of her songwriting with her strong, throaty, Florence Welch-like singing. In fact, she seems to have adopted that strength within the density of the vocals behind Florence and the Machine, but she added her own unique darkness to the sound that has led to a style that is very much her own. She will dwell on one melody for the length of a song, but the melody tends to push the boundaries of what pop music would consider comfortable.
As lush as it is, the voice of Zola Jesus does not seem important to her as a songwriter—not so much as the experience of an entire song in all of its unsettling contradictions and differences in texture. Take the steady vocals on “Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake” in comparison to the ghostly harmonica that wails in the background. Through this simple willingness for her voice to take part in the song as opposed to soaring on top and in front of it, Danilova creates an entirely new atmosphere. The song seems less like a separate song in the album than it does a crucial element to a larger, darker idea.
While this gothic sound is maintained impressively throughout Conatus, the consistency of the ghostly melodies, after a while, forces them to approach predictability.
This, again, makes for a worthwhile listening experience, but it is more a larger experience of a dark, electro drama than a traditional listening experience in which listeners will return to individual songs that tugged at very specific strings within their hearts. This is not a collection of confessions or remembrances; the album itself is the remembrance.
On songs such as “Seekir” and “Shivers,” slightly stronger melodies emerge, allowing her voice to come farther forward in the mix and convey some individuality within the album. But these hints of uniqueness are very slight, not pushing the boundaries of Zola Jesus so much as the boundaries of genre itself.
Danilova has said that she aims for mammoth, sweeping sounds in her music so her listeners might enjoy being enraptured in it. She certainly has achieved this goal in the project of Zola Jesus. Trickier answers come into play, however, when the question arises of just how far—and for how long—this type of hypnotization can travel in the realm of music.
Zola Jesus – Conatus tracklist:
- “Swords”
- “Avalanche”
- “Vessel”
- “Hikikomori”
- “Ixode”
- “Seekir”
- “In Your Nature”
- “Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake”
- “Shivers”
- “Skin”
- “Collapse”
