Album Of The Week: Zola Jesus Conatus

It's hard to believe Zola Jesus is only two proper albums deep into her career; she's already been through a world of aesthetic evolution. Nika Roza Danilova's first album was 2009's scraping, feral noise-beast The Spoils, an album I could admire but never properly enjoy. So when she followed it up with her Stridulum EP last year, it was a legit shock. Stridulum and its follow-up EP Valusia were as dark and mysterious as The Spoils, but they were also grandly theatrical and melodically warm enough that they worked as something resembling pop music, not an epithet I would've ever attached to Danilova's music before. The music on those two EPs was ballsy and fierce and take-no-prisoners, with Danilova never singing in anything less than a titanic opera-bellow, but it was also tender and personal and comforting. Danilova was making love songs, with a new reserve of sentiment and a serious command of atmosphere. Last year, a playlist of the Stridulum and Valusia EPs became my favorite thing to play when I was putting my toddler daughter to bed every night. And now she's followed those excellent EPs up with Conatus, the album that delivers on their promise.