No Pain In Pop

Swinging Jaw: Zola Jesus

Zola Jesus is mainly Nika from Wisconsin, though she has friends called Lindsay, Max Elliott and Dead Luke who help her play live. She studied opera for ten years and takes just as much inspiration from no-wave. She bridges the gap between those two distant pillars with tendencies toward the epic and Jefferson Airplane covers, all painted with the DIY glamour of U.S. Girls and Nite Jewel and a hopelessness that bit prettier than SALEM’s.

Click to read our first post for the Vice Music Blog - an interview with Zola Jesus‘ Nika.



MP3: Zola Jesus feat. Dead Luke - Somebody to Love (Jefferson Airplane cover)

Tags: vice, zola jesus

Warmth +

Flung to the far ends of a weekend again, so it’s time, inevitably, to open wide and fold jaws ’round metal scraps seasoned with the rust of hours lost: husk with a dull warmth and almighty tooth ache. Wisconsin’s Zola Jesus clamber amid week-long Broadway rubble, amnesic and in vain, searching for the buried just like city mates Salem and distant U.S. Girls. But instead of voices Chopd N Screwd or awkward, twisted rhythm, a siren’s pulled from the wreckage; one whose refrain vaguely remembers what time was before the no-wave bug bit, bass plunging like an LES neckline and ceilings fallen in. “I cannot afford to lose myself,” Nika sings, aria-trained and wet through. Soak it up, sulks; long live the new reclaimed flesh.



MP3: Zola Jesus - Sea Talk

Tags: zola jesus