Zola Jesus – Stridulum EP (2010) [Sacred Bone] // Grade: A

Stridulum feels like an experiment; Nika Rosa Danilova’s let’s-see-what-happens-if. Let’s see what happens if lo-fi gets a little higher. Let’s see what happens if hooks appear, and things to curl around them. Let’s see what happens on the other side of that gauzy curtain: center stage and a singular spotlight. Because even if this EP isn’t straight-up pop, it’s definitely not not pop, you know what I mean? It’s Zola Jesus three-quarters naked, a 20-minute excursion into sorta-slick and clean territory that manages not to tromp over the haunted vibe that made The Spoils so compelling in the first place.

Because Danilova’s voice, even upfront and naked—maybe especially upfront and naked—still haunts like hell. It kills me to make a Siouxsie comparison (girls get it arbitrarily, especially when they’ve got black hair—I wish I were exaggerating), but Stridulum has a real Juju vibe about it, at least in theory; that tenuous tightrope between clean pop and hazy, fuzzy ambiance. She wails and moans and cuts like a knife, but it’s so…clean. So absolutely intelligible. A total clouds-parting experience; I mean, you can almost see the fuzz dissipate into bubbly little particles right from the opening slash and glitch of “Night”. The noise that enveloped so much of The Spoils is suddenly replaced by an insistent thicket of drums, this army of toms, and tracks like “I Can’t Stand” and the crawling, creeping “Run Me Out” are underscored by a pulse of deeply heavy strings. Simple. Stark. An experiment.

Strike that: a successful experiment. Zola Jesus stripped is still Zola Jesus, and these 20 minutes are just as, if not a little more than, openly irresistible as anything Danilova’s released before. The question, then, is little trickier: how far can she take all this cleanliness before it annihilates the personality—before it becomes the dread Goth/Industrial Lite? Back on that tenuous tightrope we go; it’s super easy to go from “Voodoo Dolly” to “Kiss Them For Me” in a single fell swoop. Then again, I love “Kiss Them For Me”, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Just let Zola be Zola—it’s yet to do anything but totally captivate.

- Rue Sauvage