Michaela wins the “most references in a blurb” game, everyone. Time to pack up and go home.

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Pete Baran: So back in 1984 Souxsie decided to ditch the Banshees and get Tears For Fears in as a new backing band. After one fractious recording session at Abbey Road where much argument was had about how prominent the cowbell should be, the nascent pairing split up. The one track made was thought lost to time, until the renowned archaeologist Zola Jesus (she’s a real female Indiana Jones) dug it up and released it as her own work. Like the Lost Ark, but with more bat wings and less face melting.
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Jer Fairall: I was one of the few who had anything good to say about her the last time we covered her, but this one is a complete drag, aimless vocals over a squelching synth riff that might have been coolly propulsive had it anything to actually propel. I have nothing against the concept of goth-pop; this just completely forgets the pop half of the equation.
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Ian Mathers: I stand by the [8] I gave “Sea Talk,” but what “Vessel” makes clear is that her voice, certainly a powerful instrument, is a limited one; here she sounds like she’s oversinging everything, blending words into a slurred, vibrato mush, and the song as a result feels ponderous rather than majestic. Sheer off a couple of minutes and “Vessel” would make for a decent interlude, but feels overegged at nearly five minutes.
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Erick Bieritz: The most frequently referenced aspects of Nika Rosa Danilova’s music prove to be the least interesting with each song she releases. More intriguing are the pitchshifted echoes that begin “Vessel” and also push it through the climatic final minute that surpasses the hashtags. Walking a narrow line between genre pitfalls and exhausted cliches could take her somewhere special.
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Katherine St Asaph: Finally, Zola Jesus arranges its noise to match its ambitions. The haze of “Sea Talk” is gone. Underneath it, all that time, was this mechanical colossus of stalking piano notes and clanking gears and seething beats through which Nika’s voice careens and cries like a ghostly Kristeen Young or an off-kilter Toni Halliday. The track constantly sounds about to overheat or grind itself into nothing; it’s gripping to hear which happens.
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Edward Okulicz: The waves of her voice echoing are both percussive and melodic, and along with the spare piano make for a gorgeous soundscape on top of which nothing of interest happens. It’s as if she’s striving for that point of interest and overdoing the little song that’s actually there. That said, it slides by pleasantly enough.
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Michelle Myers: Sometimes, when you try too hard to be unusual you just end up being dull.
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Brad Shoup: Aw, I got psyched out looking for Zolo Jesus. My favorite touch here is the pinging gutturals in the first and last minutes, but I’m also pleased at the portentous piano placing the “Teardrop” suggestion. Zola shares Rihanna’s milky enunciation, but the latter could never limn this kind of dread. One for the road trip if you’re sticking to highways and new moons.
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Zach Lyon: Entirely worth it for the bit at the end, which is a triumph of machinery over man.
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Jonathan Bogart: All right,  I give. I miss Siouxsie too much to not settle for the next best thing.
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Michaela Drapes: Nika Roza Danilova doesn’t sound like: Siouxsie, Kate Bush, Liz Frazer, Jarboe, Diamanda Galas, Lydia Lunch, Anja Huwe, Danielle Dax, Lisa Gerrard, Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks — or even Katrina Ford or Karin Andersson or Florence. She sounds like that annoying girl who spends lunch hours in the junior high choir room bleating along tunelessly to Tori Amos, headphones stuffed in her ears, oblivious to the world around her. On paper, Zola Jesus should be perfect; I should be shoving her work down your throat, demanding you LOVE IT. In practice, “Vessel” is a horrific mess of bad production decisions and vocal missteps. It’s disappointing that three albums in Danilova hasn’t progressed; if anything, the premature accolades of her early work have pushed her in the wrong direction. Or maybe there wasn’t really anywhere for her to go in the first place.
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