The best of Heaven
Stuart Masson is impressed by EMA and Zola Jesus
EMA stands for Erika M. Anderson, but she performs with a full band. Her debut album Past Life Martyred Saints has been gathering positive reviews from across the music press spectrum, and for good reason. The live performance is something else, though. The whole gig switches between haunting vulnerability and rip-your-face-off intensity. Her lyrics are rarely positive and she doesn’t betray that with her stage demeanour.
The main highlight is ‘Butterfly Knife’, which climaxes in heavy strobing, a monstrous wall of sound, a guitar being smashed apart and its neck being launched into the crowd at concerning velocity. This is followed by the most beautiful section of the set, as she quietly strums through ‘Marked’, with its slightly disarming refrain of “I wish that every time you touched me left a mark”. ‘Closer California’ is sublimely apathetic and ends with another guitar being thrown to the ground.
She’s certainly somebody I’d recommend everybody to go and see, although I’d also recommend taking a hard hat.
Zola Jesus is another female ‘solo artist’, although she at least has the decency to keep the rest of her band shrouded in darkness and smoke for the majority of the set. Her influences range from industrial bands Throbbing Gristle and Swans to avant-garde composer Stockhausen all the way through to Tina Turner. The result is a unique blend of grimy lo-fi noise, ethereal dream pop and a big voice.
Despite the insistence of a delightful lady behind me, there is nobody that can match her voice. It is massive. She forced her parents into giving her opera lessons as a child, and I’m glad they relented. As a frontwoman, she exceeds all expectations as well, switching between statuesque-princess mode and bent-double-over-her-microphone-flailing-limbs mode. There were even two forays into the crowd and a strobe-lit headbanging sequence. There are relatively few older tracks but those relatively few are great. The swelling build-up of ‘Run Me Out’ is particularly pleasing.
The new album tracks also deliver. ‘Hikikomori’ is a beautiful swirl of synths and wailing vocals and on ‘In Your Nature’ she gives a performance to match anything I’ve heard. It’s a fantastic show and not one you’re likely to get elsewhere. One of the best gigs of my year.
