The latest offering from Zola Jesus is almost brilliant. Okovi is less alternative pop than it is anti-pop. Nika Roza Danilova could easily perform songs akin to Marina And The Diamonds, Lana Del Ray or even Jessie J, such are the popstar qualities of her voice so her decision to take a different route is reason enough to savour the delights of Okovi.

When it works, like on the lead single ‘Exhumed’, it is sublime. That tune is laden with menace and self-examination. Even before the lyrics begin, you are drawn in and held captive by the haunting, threatening strings and vocalisations. Similarly, the chilling refrain of ‘Wiseblood’ will linger with you. In the hands of a lesser artist it would be a throwaway line but Danilova delivers it over a minimal backing track and it is heart wrenching. ‘Veka’ is discomforting in a David Cronenberg fashion and builds into a ‘Cloudbusting’ vibe.

Even on the tunes that don’t quite hit, there is a sense of failed experimentation that garner’s merit in the Beckettian “Fail again, fail better” sense. Tracks like ‘Witness’ and ‘Half Life’ sound unfinished, as do a handful of other tracks. They work in building the atmosphere of the album but are unsatisfying in isolation.

Recent single 'Soak' is written through the lens of serial killer’s victim; clinging to life and about to be dumped in the water. “I was thinking about this crucial moment inside the victim’s mind, when she knows she’s going to die. She thinks back at her life and the futility of the decisions she made, when in the end her life would be cut short against her will”, Zola explains. That specific moment gains universal applicability in those four minutes.

Any music which pushes boundaries in this fashion is by its nature inconsistent and, in this case, frustrating. Okovi is so close to brilliance that you can feel it. It has more potential than product, but it nonetheless demands to be heard. ‘Exhumed’ and ‘Wiseblood’ are among the best songs you will hear in 2017 and it would be criminal to overlook them.

Okvoi is available from amazon & iTunes.

Today Zola Jesus announces her new album Okovi set for release Sept 8th via Sacred Bones Records, and shares the first single 'Exhumed'. Zola Jesus is set to play a London show on Nov 7 at Village Underground with more European dates to be announced soon.

“Last year, I moved back to the woods in Wisconsin where I was raised. I built a little house just steps away from where my dilapidated childhood tree fort is slowly recombining into earth. Okovi was fed by this return to roots and several very personal traumas. While writing Okovi, I endured people very close to me trying to die, and others trying desperately not to. Meanwhile, I was fighting through a haze so thick I wasn’t sure I’d find my way to the other side. Death, in all of its masks, has been encircling everyone I love, and with it the questions of legacy, worth, and will. Okovi is a Slavic word for shackles. We’re all shackled to something—to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back.  Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?”

This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I’ll ever have to blood-bound family. Nika Roza Danilova has been recording music as Zola Jesus for more than a decade. For the majority of that time, she’s been on Sacred Bones Records, and Okovi marks her reunion with the label.

Okovi tracklist:

1. Doma

2. Exhumed

3. Soak

4. Ash to Bone

5. Witness

6. Siphon

7. Veka

8. Wiseblood

9. NMO

10. Remains

 11. Half Life