[rating=6.00]
As her career progresses, Zola Jesus continues to turn pop structures topsy turvy. Her early releases, The Spoils, Stridulum, and the darkly drifting 6 track meetup, LA Vampires Meets Zola Jesus EP, were certainly deeper, more progressive affairs, showcasing Nika Danilova’s affection for bottom of the trench synths and gothic overtones. These albums, often commanding and occasionally brutal, were far from “ear candy.” And while her indie-breakthrough, Contatus, bristled with energy and symphonics, it was difficult to latch onto some of the melodies. Not because they weren’t present, but because her main instrument, that deep, Midwestern vocal acumen (the one that once aspired to sing opera), stayed buried below electronic drums and a Tower of Babel-type groundswell of electronic instruments.
Versions, a highly accessible reworking of her previous songs alongside composer JG Thirwell, might as well be dubbed “Zola Jesus for beginners.” Perhaps taking a cue from the clarity that Versions afforded her musical muse, Taiga takes the vocal pop territory Danilova veered into and dials it up tenfold. Given Danilova’s predilection for mixing the odd and the classical, Taiga isn’t traditional pop in the way we might think of it—especially in the wake of one of pop’s biggest years on record with releases from Taylor Swift, Arianna Grande, and Iggy Azalea. Danilova made and, and now has made, classical pop for the highbrow; a Gertrude Stein-style experiment to distinguish high and low art for audiences to willfully consume.
Without proper contextualization, one might not know what to expect from Taiga or from Danilova’s chameleon-esque tendencies. But first single, “Dangerous Days,” sets both pace and tone and the template upon which much of Taiga is built around. “Dangerous Days” is a bit of an outlier in the Zola Jesus catalog. A potential club banger, one ripe for amped-up remixing, and a track on par with sexy singles such as Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own,” or “Hits Me Like a Rock” from CSS. Danilova has gone all in for shaper production, treble boosts, and finer tuned melodies. The synth groundswells are still there—there’s nowhere else for them to go, as integral as they are to Zola Jesus’ sound—but they crash in after slow-builds of sound, announce their presence willingly, and unfold faster than before. “Dust” rides a mid-tempo, R&B laden groove to its finish line, punctuated with a pop of horns; “Hunger,” kicks off like a marching band stuck in a rut before going full on “Drumline” with a pulse and a push; “Lawless” cribs what might have been an early TV On the Radio beat and surrounds it with a bigger sense of grandeur; and “Nail” showcases Danilova’s biggest vocals on tape, multi-tracked and laden with harmonies from the outset. “Set me free,” she asks on “Nail.” “Pull the nail out with your teeth…tradition is a slave to its owner.”
Lines like that, as well as the oddity of certain tracks like “Ego,” will keep Zola Jesus from breaking forcefully into the mainstream. She’s too eccentric for modern radio and too economical for the avant-garde. Just as well; Taiga may be a bid for bigger production values and a clarion call for some new fans and a shot of new blood. But Taiga, as an LP, is risky business. Much of the endearing qualities that garnered Danilova her fan base—her penchant for imagery, her gothic and industrial-lite sounds, and her steady, detached alto—are tamped down on Taiga, replaced in large part for grander, slicker cinema.
And yet, it still doesn’t sound as if her music has shifted that much; simply that she’s tried on some new, fancier clothes and bought a bigger house to accommodate the bigger rooms she’s adapted to playing. There are moments of excellence and even a few tracks of pure stardom on Taiga–readymade singles and a larger tilt towards car-blasting thumpers, most notably. And “Dangerous Days” should have been a Lady Gaga or Nikki Minaj joint. (And, no, that’s not an insult.) But there are a few pieces of soul and mind missing in the bigger roars of “Hollow” and “It’s Not Over.” As such, Taiga might end up becoming the division point for Zola Jesus: the least favorite record of her “old” fans and the beginning of a potential new career trajectory for her “new” fans. For the rest of us, straddling the middle, we’ll likely watch her with a restless eye and a deep sense of anticipation for her next aural maneuver.
