L.A. Vampires / Zola Jesus – “L.A. Vampires Meets Zola Jesus” – [Not not Fun Records]

Girl on girl grime. (And I mean grime, like when you can’t tell if
it’s mascura or filth, not grime the brief beat genre). Heavy with
the bass catacomb crawling synthwebs slow spun by LA Vampires
aka Amanda Brown, of Pocohaunted. Her LA Vampires bubble up
from their secret lair in the LA tar pits, very thick with stacked layers
of sonic sediment. Happily trapped in the ooze comes Zola Jesus,
her voice a candle (sometimes reflected and reverbed and layered
itself). Her darkling opera is now a calling card, and the words are
sometimes lost…which is okay, as through the murk it all
became clear to me: her style is the substance. Even without
lyrics for “Searching” (an excellent track) and “Looking In”
the voice denotes austere beauty. An isolation maybe more
inflicted on her via curse, than sought out a la Garbo. I still
hear Cocteau Twins, but its nice that the deep bombast here
has a whiff of reggae in its smoke. Ever so slight, call it
rub-a-drub if you will. Sliding blues lurks in “Vous.”

-Thurston Hunger