LA SHOW REVIEW in LA RECORD
January 15, 2010
Zola Jesus summoned a group huddle for her performance, setting up her sampler on the floor. During her second solo Zola Jesus show ever, Nika Roza also climbed the stage a couple times, enabling more people to see the diminutive siren. Her white skin looked good shot in tungsten. She was tiny. One girl in the audience motioned of picking her up like a snack and popping Roza in her mouth. Cute, a bit hunched over, messy black hair, she bellowed and swooned between crouching at her sampler to cue beats for the next song. I’d like to describe it as goth r&b opera. She just walked off the Beetlejuice set singing whoa whoa like a Dreamgirl. Her simple set-up gave full attention to the raw, powerful set of pipes in that mouth. The texture of her voice against the music was concrete and unpolished in the best sense possible.
