Album Review: Zola Jesus - Versions

Zola Jesus, or Nika Roza Danilova as she is rarely referred to, has clearly transcended her electro-gothic roots. After being asked to perform at New York's Guggenheim Museum in 2012, Danilova took the bold idea of performing her songs in a stripped back, small orchestral arrangement. This album is the result of those performances.

As wonderful as the existing Zola Jesus albums are, lush and beautiful are hardly terms that come to mind when describing them, so it's all the more wonderful that this album works as well as it does. Stripped of the gothic dark wave electronica, we are given more room to marvel at how utterly gorgeous a singer Danilova is when she allows herself to be. The new arrangements, for the most part, stick to the original in terms of structure, but the string and minimal beat backing breathes a human immediacy into the music that simply wasn't there before. The new versions of Hikikomori and Seekir are so excellent that it's difficult to hear the originals presented as they were.

Of the nine songs here, only one is a new track and five are from her most recent LP, so there is a tendency to compare these to the originals or perhaps feel slighted by a cover album of one's own songs – but this wouldn't be fair.