Since 2009, Nika Roza Danilova from Phoenix. Arizona has been making glossy gothic pop under the stage name of Zola Jesus. Her parents are first-generation Americans of Russian, German, Slovenian, and Ukrainian descent. Similarly, she channels a broad range of influences. Singers who inspire her include Siouxsie Sioux, Kate Bush, Lisa Gerrard, and Elizabeth Fraser, but also blue-chip pop behemoths such as Mariah Carey and Barbara Streisand.
Arkhon is her sixth studio album for the esteemed Brooklyn based label Sacred Bones, whose roster also features Blanck Mass, David Lynch, John Carpenter, The Soft Moon, and Irish singer Hilary Woods. This lavish is impeccably polished and executed, opening with Lost, which concludes with stirring percussion reminiscent of Dead Can Dance. Big swooping power ballads such as Dead and Gone are unashamedly histrionic. Desire brings this to the brink of something you’d hear on America’s Got Talent.
Yet Danilova has enough inventiveness to steer clear from mainstream mediocrity. In ancient Greece, arkhon meant power or leader, and is also a Gnostic term referring to power yielded by a flawed god.
“They taint and tarnish humanity, keeping them corrupted instead of letting them find their harmonious selves,” Danilova explains. “I do feel like we are living in an arkhonic time; these negative influences are weighing extremely heavy on all of us. We’re in a time of arkhons.”
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Arkhon is an impressively solid album, if sometimes lacking in originality. It confirms the place of Zola Jesus in the pantheon of dark and slightly twisted contemporary pop.
