Queens, New York, 2009: in a dark kitchen-cum-venue muraled with grimy rainbows, a young woman sat curled on the floor belting out her operatic soul to the ring of a small keyboard. In what seems today like a past life, this was Nika Roza Danilova, the now 24-year-old Wisconsin-bred singer-songwriter who makes music as Zola Jesus-- a vision planted with the noise-flecked seeds of Throbbing Gristle and gloomy Diamanda Galás that has since bloomed into widescreen industrial art-pop. This D.I.Y. show four years ago epitomized the fly-by-night Brooklyn indie scene at the height of late-aughts blog-rock. In the spring of 2012, Danilova was in the same city but a different world. On the Upper East Side, donning an angelic high-fashion contraption that featured the likeness of wings, she performed within the cylindrical ramps of the revered Guggenheim Museum. A conductor was present.
From this moment comes Versions, a new collection from Danilova's collaboration with a string quartet led by J.G. Thirlwell, a vet of experimental industrial music since the 1980s who is also known as Foetus. (His collaborations range from transgressive electronic like Nurse With Wound and Coil to provocateur rock legends Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch.) The orchestral realm is new for Danilova, but not unexpected; from the start, Zola Jesus has exhibited a devoted narrative of change. Songs like Versions' "Night" and "Sea Talk" were once ensconced in surreal, grating reverb-- see New Amsterdam's "Lady Maslenitsa" for how far the lo-fi abrasion went-- and later turned into thundering ballads, while she evolved further on 2011's Conatus LP, embracing metallic percussion and the skittering beats of 1990s Intelligent Dance Music. "There's a sense of anarchy to it," she’s said of IDM. Making industrial sounds with avant-garde influence but foremost pop sense, she could also find a kindred spirit in, say, Trent Reznor, and they've shared many collaborators, of them iconic film director David Lynch, the producer Flood, and Thirlwell.
Despite the shifts, there are essential qualities that bind the Zola Jesus songbook. The enormity of her morose voice is a constant, as are ominous themes, from "Six Feet (From My Baby)" (a song about her own burial) to titles such as "Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake". Her songs remain elegant and brutal with a life-or-death seriousness, exorcising loneliness with tension you could pop with a pin. The best of Danilova's songwriting, most of which is collected here, has grown anthemic, as she gestures towards grander reaches of ambition-- "Ever since I wrote my first song I wanted to be playing Madison Square Garden," she's said. She has collaborated with the rapper El-P, covered Rihanna's "Diamonds", and in 2011 sang on M83's commercial breakthrough Hurry Up, We're Dreaming.
There's something curious about Versions, though. Many of the qualities that strings typically cast upon an artist's work-- austerity, grace, a cinematic sweep-- already exist in the original takes of her songs. (The songs here have all been released before, some twice, save for the exceedingly romantic new track "Fall Back".) Conatus itself used acoustic strings, but what gives its orchestral versions value is a brighter take on her expressive singing. Danilova has described her creative process as self-critical and emotionally draining; "Why does it always have to be war for me?" she's asked. Here, her voice is less menacingly deep and air-tight; it sounds open, sweet, and full of light. Often, it is conventionally beautiful, like she's freed herself. "Avalanche (Slow)", for instance, is a sublime deconstruction where Danilova's words blissfully crawl, hitting notes sharply with stronger vibrato. As the piercing high strings weep, she sounds fixed in a dream of total control, slowing her pace as a chaotic world buzzes about.
The older songs, off Stridulum and Valusia, are the best of her catalog. It's hard to imagine any take of the epic ballads "Sea Talk" or "Night" losing value; fans of previous versions, which had programmed strings, will want to hear them with real ones. But relative to the originals, the orchestral versions have a distancing effect, as if listening in on something once removed. Their emotional core is dramatic as ever, but some details, washed out here, are missed, like the ghostly buzzing that prefaces "Night" or the louder beats that crash "Sea Talk" open. Versions offers welcomed arrangements, but in both cases they are trumped by the visceral power of those songs' heavier incarnations.
Versions benefits from the inclusion of "Fall Back", the new song, which seems composed with the grandiose potential of an orchestra in mind-- the pizzicato parts are celebratory, and a colossal violin crescendo adds sweeping dimension, building to an overwhelming cloud of sound that conjures the feel of a gleaming, open sky. "This is my home/ You are my only one," Danilova sings in booming, crystalline lines, holding back nothing of a rapturous heart. "I would do anything to be with you forever." As heard here, it’s not hard to imagine these passionate admissions mixing with the sounds of clinking champagne glasses at a wedding.
The most compelling thing about Versions has more to do with Danilova herself than Thirlwell or the Mivos Quartet. Zola Jesus is rarely discussed in a capital-p Pop context, as if having left noise behind her work could be more truly populist. Stripped of most electronics, though, these massive hooks and their collective human core are put under a microscope, and it's impressive to see the songs carry themselves without all the dark, propulsive production. Danilova has taken these compositions about as far as they can go, and still there remains something intriguing about Zola Jesus, not just for her ghostly enigma or art world appeal but now for what really comes next.
