Zola Jesus
Conatus

I am increasingly convinced of my idea that time tends to go backward. And many (too many? I wouldn't know how to answer) albums that are coming out these days are not part of it at all. You sit on the timeline and watch it unfold. With all the material you can see, you choose to recover it and mix it with a devolved present. Some succeed, and some do not. For me, Nika Roza Danilova with this third work, in her own way, has succeeded. Steering the Zola Jesus spacecraft away from the icy parts of her past, without abandoning them completely, she has managed to become more pop without any easy tricks (despite her own admission of being somehow attracted to Lady Gaga, but considering her artistically empty like an amphora) nor any crap to boost commercial interests. She has simply managed to insert the gears of the minimal industrial that she loves so much into a clear machine, albeit insane.

Just the industrial and synthetic march of "Vessel" speaks volumes; it seems to echo late-period NIN, immersed in a lyrical solution tending toward opening in white ashy skies, the piano stains the icy presences with (in)human warmth, the voice then opens into a touching and strained refrain. When the following "Hikikomori" starts, I widen my eyes, and the thought that crosses my mind is "damn, sooo nineties!", and that is precisely the vibe you get in this track, the intro with the pressing synths that accompany the voice weaving a melody of an electro piece left over from the decade that best represented a genre (at least for me), until the entry of a much closer to real drums section than the usual drum machines of Ours, variety is at home in this record, strings are the masters of the scene and the outro is entrusted to them. Not even a second passes before an insistent beat starts, electodelight, tumtumtumtumtumtumtum, and the voice makes its way without moving anything, duets with itself, with choirs that embellish it all, harmonized responses just in the pop manner. In "Shivers" the fragmented electro structures of the Radiohead peep through, and the peak is beautifully reached.

I'm sorry for Bjork (you can skewer me, hang me, insult me, flunk me, whatever you want), but in its simplicity, this album is decidedly better than her "Biophilia". And this is enough to lick my ears.