Zola Jesus Breaks Down New Album Arkhon Track by Track: Exclusive

Mary Siroky
·9 min read
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The post Zola Jesus Breaks Down New Album Arkhon Track by Track: Exclusive appeared first on Consequence.

What does it mean to be an artist in this day and age, throughout constant uncertainty, a world that seems more precarious by the day, and an industry that is still piecing itself back together? This is the question that has plagued Zola Jesus, and one she works through meticulously in her new album, Arkhon, out Friday, June 24th via Sacred Bones Records.

It’s a sonically adventurous album while also lyrically dense, packed with ruminations on spirituality and purpose, hopefulness and despair. “It’s okay to feel hopeless, so long as we can pick ourselves up and accept the work that lays ahead of us,” she tells Consequence.

Born Nika Roza Danilova, the artist is now releasing her sixth album as Zola Jesus, following 2017’s Okovi, the remix edition Okovi: Additions in 2018, and the live album Roadburn 2018 in 2020. There’s a palpable emotionality woven into Arkhon, and it feels aptly reflective of these tumultuous times. As broad as some of the themes may be, though, Zola Jesus gets to the heart of what it means to be an artist in particular right now.

With the release of the new record, she unpacks each song and provides insight into the making of each piece of the collection. Listen to Arkhon and check out the inspiration behind each track below.

“Lost”:

“Lost” was built out of a loop of a Slovenian Women’s Choir singing a folk song from the region some of my ancestors are from. As soon as I wrote this song I started to unravel what I was trying to communicate through this new album. The song is a mantra to help those who feel lost — to remind us all that place is a relationship with the land as much as it is with oneself. This record was a very spiritual experience for me to make, and I think “Lost” really represents that.

“The Fall”:

I was really overwhelmed with the writing process and not sure how to put my very complicated feelings into song. Even just entering my little home studio made me feel sick. The more I thought about it, the harder it was to get anything out. Intellectualizing the songwriting process was not working for me. So, I wrote “The Fall” after a promise to myself to let go and simply connect with the healing power of creating.

That breakdown in the middle was a way for me to channel the psychedelic acid trip of my emotions into a sensual rebuttal, and to play with the character driving the song. I wasn’t sure anyone I played it for actually liked it, but then I realized I didn’t really care anymore. My association with songwriting used to be something I’d do for others, but it started to change after that. I realized I needed to write for myself more than anyone else.

“Undertow”:

“Undertow” was originally a very martial-sounding song. The beat was more rigid when I programmed it. But once Matt Chamberlain played it, this whole new groove emerged. He slowed it down and made it so much more embodied. I didn’t even miss the old “Undertow,” because this beat was something I didn’t expect and never could have done on my own. It was a real testament to the collaboration process, and what a good drummer can do to a song.

I’m usually in the habit of writing songs that are quite vocal-driven, but in this case the beat felt like the ruler. This song is a bodied exploration of the mood of the record — dazed and numb from being suspended in total upheaval.

“Into the Wild”:

Listening to “Into The Wild” still gives me the spooks to this day. Like many on this record, it’s such a raw song for me. So many of these songs come from such a frictioned place of vulnerability. It forced me to really put everything I had into the music, because for a moment, the music felt like all I had.

So many long-term relationships ended during such a short period that I had to finally roll up my sleeves and do the work, which was to find security within myself. It feels so incredibly lonely to realize that only you can fix yourself. But once you get used to it, you grow and evolve and everything becomes technicolor. You just gotta get through the wilderness first.

“Dead and Gone”:

The demo for this song was just voice and a drone guitar that I had laid down in one take. It was super crude, and initially I thought I’d add organ and a beat and make it heavy and punishing. But then I decided to hit up my touring violist and dear friend Louise Woodward to ask her if she’d make a string arrangement. She sent this arrangement back to me and yeah… it needed nothing. She understood my pain on such an intimate level. It was all there in the arrangement. I can’t thank her enough for putting her heart and soul into comforting mine with these strings. Truly magical collaboration.

“Sewn”:

While making Arkhon, I got very into mysticism. Not only mystical traditions like gnosticism, kabbalah, sufi, etc… but also my own personal relationship with experiencing the divine firsthand. I wrote “Sewn” as an ode to waking up and throwing myself into the well of gnosis.

Sometimes it takes burning the world you live in to create a new one for yourself. Each life has the potential to embody spirit in a way that will confound the gods. Those in power are hell bent on keeping us from this truth. Faith is the direct experience of supreme understanding. But it’s up to us to carry a lantern into the dark if we want to discover it for ourselves.

“Desire”:

The day I wrote “Desire,” I played that chord progression over and over and over, for maybe an hour, until the song emerged so organically that I couldn’t stop singing it. It comforted me in such an unusually new way. I never really understood my relationship with desire until I filled my lungs up with it. I instantly began to reflect on all that I have desired in my life and the crazy places it has taken me.

There is wholesome desire, there is sinful desire, and there is just desire. It can be so simple, yet so painfully complicated. I recorded the song live in one take because I wanted to capture the immediate expression of the song’s performance. This is a song for myself first and foremost. It’s a healing sigil that in performance allows me to deepen my understanding of myself.

“Fault”:

This is another very intense song for me to listen to, as it’s so personal and was written in such a stressful time. I think writing Fault was the beginning of opening myself up and softening against the very hard circumstances I was in. After writing this demo, I hit up Randall and basically told him “I need you to make this record with me.” I knew he’d make it sound as heavy as I needed it to sound, and provide support for the emotional aspects that were so brutal for me to navigate on my own.

This song was also the impetus that led us to work with Matt Chamberlain. I’m so grateful for that collaboration because after writing a song like this, I realized I didn’t have what I needed to properly succumb to the process. Once that happened the floodgates opened. I felt supported and free to dive inward and let out thoughts that I couldn’t even admit to myself.

“Efemra”:

“Efemra” was written in the delirium of being an American in 2020. I was supposed to finish my record in March of 2020 but then Tom Hanks got Covid and the entire country shut down. I postponed my recording for a year. In that time I picked up other hobbies, such as: shitposting on Twitter, spiraling into a deep depression, fearing Covid had brought the death knell of the entire music industry as I knew it, getting lost in activism explainers on Instagram, forgetting what day or year it is, fighting with relatives about — well, you know, we were all there.

At this point I had so few shits to give, and I had eviscerated my identity as a musician. I was just a beast in a basement staring into the hell grid of Ableton like it owed me nothing. Then I wrote “Efemra.” I was amused by how it captured my malaise. It sort of broke my brain to let this one out, cause like so many songs on this record it shattered rules I drew around my process. If catharsis is the betrayal of control, then this is it.

“Do That Anymore”:

I programmed this weird beat, and then made Matt Chamberlain painstakingly learn it, which he nailed and transformed into something so much better than anything I could’ve drawn into a grid. The song really evolved after Skuli Sverisson hopped on the track and laid down a bass line that brought out this heartbreaking harmonic texture.

The song was written when I was feeling hopeless — specifically, after Biden was chosen as the nominee for President of the United States instead of Bernie. It made me realize that no one is really looking out for us at the top. I knew this intellectually of course, but that was a real leveling moment for my disillusionment. I don’t think we’re fucked, but I think it’s okay to grieve the world we probably will never see in our lifetime.

I realize now that it’s on us to build an ideal world from the ground up. I don’t think anything at the top is honest or valuable or worth saving, and I don’t think it’s in their interest to take care of those who are being swallowed alive by their corrupt governments and oligarchies. It’s okay to feel hopeless, so long as we can pick ourselves up and accept the work that lays ahead of us. I wanted to leave the record on this note because I think it defines so much of what I’ve been feeling and what I think people need to hear. In order to move forward we must first state what needs to change, even if it’s painful to admit.

Zola Jesus Breaks Down New Album Arkhon Track by Track: Exclusive
Mary Siroky

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