Nick Bollinger delves into the life-and-death matters of Zola Jesus's Okovi.
Zola Jesus Photo: supplied
Nicole Hummel is a 28-year-old musician from the American Midwest, who in a nod to her Ukrainian roots will sometimes go by the name Nika Rosa Danilova, but she makes her music as Zola Jesus.
It’s strident and dramatic and there’s something classically East European about it. I almost expect her to break into ‘The Song Of The Volga Boatmen’.
Okovi Photo: supplied
But I shouldn’t be flippant, as this latest album - her fifth - grew out of a particularly grim set of circumstances. During the writing, Hummel - or Danilova as she is currently known – found herself dealing with two close acquaintances in life-death situations; one suffering from terminal cancer, the other recovering from a series of suicide attempts. Danilova began to see both individuals as prisoners – one a prisoner of death, the other, in a way, a prisoner of life. It spawned the album’s title Okovi, a Slavic word for ‘shackles’, and also provided the central metaphor for songs like these.
Danilova sings and is responsible for a lot of the electronics, which mark out the landscape of her music. The other ingredient is an orchestral string section. Occasionally she will merge the two, but when she sings with only the strings it is quite a contrast and the effect is rather beautiful.
In the penultimate track, ‘Remains’, an unexpected dance beat kicks in, as though Danilova suddenly feels a rock anthem coming on. Though the questions she asks in the song – ‘Is this all there is?’ and ‘What remains of us?’ – remain unanswered, the musical upswing hints at a personal resolution.
Okovi borders on bombast, but has some undeniably majestic moments, especially in the little instrumental interludes scattered through the disc: electronic-ambient compositions which not only work as musical palate cleansers but also as a relief from the album’s darker meditations.
Okovi is not a fun record. It’s gothic and grim and, you might say, overstated. Then again, can you really be overstated when you’re singing about matters of life and death?
Okovi is available on Sacred Bones.
