Last year alone, fallen opera singer turned goth-pop icon Nika Roza Danilova released as Zola Jesus an EP, a split LP and two full lengths, in addition to an album with Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and songwriter Freddy Ruppert as Former Ghosts. This year the 21-year-old Madison singer is continuing that prolific streak. In March she released her breakthrough Stridulum EP, a personal best that attained Zola Jesus' biggest sound yet, which she followed shortly after with a brooding, psychedelic collaborative record with LA Vampires. Planned for this fall: Yet another Zola Jesus EP and another Former Ghosts LP, and a guest appearance on Fucked Up's upcoming Year of the Ox 12-inch. (For good measure, she sometimes also records guilty-pleasure dance songs with this side project.)
That all might seem like overkill, but Danilova has the kind of voice it's difficult to tire of, an elemental wail with an undercurrent of human vulnerability, the result of vocal imperfections years of opera lessons were never able to smooth out.
"It’s very scientific when you’re singing operathat’s why I had to stop singing it for so long, since I had so much anxiety about getting my voice perfect," Danilova told me in an interview this March. "So when I started Zola Jesus, I championed those imperfections. Sometimes I get off tone or I strain or I do other things that would be frowned upon in the operatic world, and it’s my way of saying, ‘Fuck you, this is the way my voice sounds.’”
Danilova keeps a fittingly busy touring schedule; she'll be doing shows later this summer with Fever Ray and Wolf Parade, then touring major North American cities this fall with The xx. First, however, she'll return to Milwaukee, where she briefly attended college, for a pair of shows this month: Sunday she headlines a bill at the Stonefly Brewery as part of WMSE's Radio Summer Camp Music Festival, then on Thursday, July 22, she opens for The Faint at the Turner Hall Ballroom.
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