Zola Jesus’ “The Spoils”
Zola Jesus‘ The Spoils is fucked up and maddening, and I can’t stop listening to it. The work of an 18-year-old woman from Madison, Wisconsin, named Nika Roza Danilova, The Spoils is as paranoid a record as I have heard, its lack of finish both pure home recording and a little bit horror film, too. The way it felt the first time you listened to Cabaret Voltaire or Einsturzende Neubauten — that sensation of alienation as you’re confronted with something so familiar (a song) going in such an unimagined way (deeper, darker and crunchier) — is comparable to the Zola Jesus experience.
And “experience” really is the right word for it, because there’s nothing passive about The Spoils. This is not the kind of record you can put on in the background while you surf the web, read a book or watch the game — to such a degree that it seems intentional. As in film, recording amateurism can go either of two ways: it either makes us too aware of the rudiments of the recording process, or it becomes a vital character in its own right, a breadcrumb trail to an invisible but realized auteurism. And on that axis, The Spoils is very much a Blair Witch Project in its self-containment. To listen and engage is to fully accept the album’s reality. There is nothing else.
“Clay Bodies” is my favorite song (it and “The Way” are as pop as it gets), and it’s an enormous, darkly thumping thing that balances the thuds of piano keys with Danilova’s reverb-shrouded vocals. (And definitely “shrouded”; there’s no other word for it.) She beckons and cries, all loss and heartbreak, with such force that it’s impossible to imagine a young girl feeling so much, what burden she has been forced to bear.
But that’s just kinda what 18 is like, isn’t it? No pain is greater than this pain, no moment more important than right now, nothing newer than our own experience.
Still though, this is a genuinely weird record — so weird that I’m still not sure who to recommend this to, how far a document so knowingly personal can spread. But what’s the point of making a record about alienation if it’s not alienating? Where’s the risk in that?
And so there’s this: a weird record made at enormous personal cost (that’s a total guess) with an uncertain audience. Isn’t that the exact kinda record we all tell ourselves we’ll embrace?
“And so there’s this: a weird record made at enormous personal cost (that’s a total guess) with an uncertain audience. Isn’t that the exact kinda record we all tell ourselves we’ll embrace?”
Truth. I accept your implicit dare …I will listen to this today!
“Clay Bodies” is terrifying. And great.
I love this record so much.
i suppose i’ll give it a few test listens. sounds like the complete opposite of the deastro i just downloaded.
Any clue about the missing tracks – will these be showing up soon, or is this a licensing issue?
Otherwise, been listening to the clips and loving it!
The samples sound great. I’d be downloading it right now if it wasn’t for the two missing tracks. Any idea when or if they will be showing up?
After some more looking around it looks like the tracks missing from the album are available on the single here [url=http://www.emusic.com/album/Zola-Jesus-Single-MP3-Download/11524266.html] Single by Zola Jesus[/url]
Well that didn’t work, hopefully this will.
Single by Zola Jesus
“And so there’s this: a weird record made at enormous personal cost (that’s a total guess) with an uncertain audience. Isn’t that the exact kinda record we all tell ourselves we’ll embrace? ”
No, because that’s nothing but a formula, and I don’t embrace formulas. I listen to the music and respond to that. What I hear from these samples is reminiscent of many young artists/bands of today – like the Raveonettes, for example, or Art Brut – who have figured out one sound they can do well and just keep doing that over and over. Most of the samples sounded the same to me, screechy, feedback-drenched instrumentation underneath distant, heavily-treated vocals. After one or two songs it gets tiresome.
“the Raveonettes . . . have figured out one sound they can do well and just keep doing that over and over”
I actually think The Raveonettes have some flexibility in their sound. They veer from distortion-filled noise-rock to (an admittedly rough version of) girl-group pop melodies.
BTW, to avoid confusion, the “Daniel” who is posting here is not me (welcome, BTW; I haven’t seen you post comments before). Hopefully “Daniel” vs. “Daniel, Esq.” isn’t confusing similar. If you need a way to distinguish us — I’m the incoherent one.
I’m intrigued by the snippets and am downloading bits at a time, starting with “Devil Take You” and “Tell It To The Willow”. So far, this is reminding me strongly of the Cocteau Twins’ first album “Garlands” — the general feeling of dread, the sense of a singer possessed by some larger-than-human thing she can’t articulate, the sound horribly mangled by trying to fit within the confines allotted to it.
“reminiscent of many young artists/bands of today … who have figured out one sound they can do well and just keep doing that over and over.”
Nothing personal, but that’s exactly the kind of line that condescending grown-ups have been dismissing new music with for decades, if not centuries. It certainly applies perfectly to “Garlands”, as well as, say, the Jesus & Mary Chain, the Ramones, AC/DC, “Meet The Beatles”, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters…
Sometimes one sound is enough, at least for an album. Consider the plight of musicians before the modern age of amplified sound and studio recording, whose instruments always sounded like the same thing. They managed to differentiate themselves within their hardwired sounds somehow.
I love that she covers the Lady in the Radiator song from Eraserhead on the other album…
“Sometimes one sound is enough, at least for an album.”
Sure, if they can write songs. And that more than anything is what ultimately separates the wheat from the chaff.
“Consider the plight of musicians before the modern age of amplified sound and studio recording, whose instruments always sounded like the same thing. They managed to differentiate themselves within their hardwired sounds somehow.”
Yeag, by having the talent to play their instruments, which is another area which technology has made nearly obsolete.
love this recor keep up the good work……