Zola Jesus rises again

Four years ago, I wrote a solitary blog post about Zola Jesus (Nika Danilova to her mum) noting that she made music in the vein of Florence and the Machine, without any of the recognition or fanfare.

She's released a couple of albums in the interim, sadly without much to show for it, but her new single made my ears prick up like Bugs Bunny when he spots the sexy lady rabbit from the Cadbury's Caramel advert. It turns out Zola recently signed to Mute Records, home to Goldfrapp and Depeche Mode, and some of their gothic pop stylings have rubbed off on her.

Dangerous Days, the lead track from the forthcoming album Taiga, is sideways synthpop, that manages to be angelic and sultry all at the same time. Can you even have sultry angels? What would that look like?

The good news is you can get Dangerous Days for free by sending Zola an email (or, rather, donating your email address to her record label) on her official website.

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Introducing Zola Jesus

This Christmas, Florence And The Machine is releasing yet another version of her admittedly-quite-good debut album, Lungs. This third (fourth?) repackage comes with exclusive artwork, new sleeve notes, one new song, that abomination with Dizzee Rascal, a pendant, some remixes, some live tracks, a clod of soil, a breath mint, five stamps, a lithograph of Florence's GCSE art project, a ticket stub, a fairy's tear, a moonbeam, a wheel of brie and, for one lucky recipient, Florence's actual lung.

It's all very exciting, but why not save yourself all that clutter and buy Zola Jesus's new album instead? It sounds exactly like Florence and The Machine AND she promises not to turn up without provocation or invitation to every festival in the universe singing You Got The Bloody Love until the original loses every atom of its power.

Here are two of Zola's songs. They are quite literally embedded below.

Zola Jesus - Sea Talk


Zola Jesus - Night Music


Both tracks are available on the album Stridulum II.

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