Zola Jesus, Fee Lion, Wingtips

  This was the fucking show.....the....fucking....show.  Before this show I knew of Zola Jesus. I knew of her status. Her name just had this natural echo to it. You can carve tunnels into mountains with it. For a long time it was like walking around this tremendous mountain all the time. Zola Fucking Jesus.....this was my first time seeing her live, and it was with Fee Lion and Wingtips.  I know my pictures from that show were shit. I was kinda far. The better ones from Fee Lion are actually from a show of hers in Cole's earlier this year.
   The inclusion of the last two bands made this show closer, more accessible. They are local, and they play a lot. They have headlined their own shows and have opened for some cool mother fuckers. I'll see Fee Lion a bunch of fucking times more. I think this is just a beginning for her. Her songs are few but they are....big...iconic. The kind that will compel you to remember the musician. And for right now. She is ours. Small enough to still be ours.  Vision, On Me, these are some power fucking disco sophistication trips. There are these other two or three that she plays in the middle of her sets that are new tracks, at least they are not on the CD she has out. I always anticipate these, and I cannot wait until they are on CD, well....assuming they are still gonna make those. I hope so at least. There was this sweetness I found with Last Minute. Got me to buy the EP Gray Area, on Feeltrip Records. Vincent's voice is clear. The synths are thick and bassy....not hollow.  All of us 40 and over can relax and dance slow like we used to before VNV quickened our pace for ever after. Its possible one can find everything too.....familiar. Done before. Well...I caught you liking it. You were moving to it when you thought it was a Cure track you were unfamiliar with. I could have told you it was Martin Dupont....and you would have loved it. I am not that cruel and it's too much trouble explaining who Martin Dupont is, right?   So, let's not hate for bullshit reasons. Wingtips is cool, right? I fucking think so. I was in the back room with David, having a nice conversation when Wingtips played. The crowd seemed good for them.
  The audience then grew for Fee Lion and then Zola Jesus. So I was way in the back it seemed. I crept closer whenever I could. I did not let my distance from the stage bother me. I have seen Fee Lion before and shall see again in these small venues.  Her enthusiasm is real and catches as always. I was further back than usual, but was happy to see Fee Lion have this crowd too. She ripped her latex outfit. It tore under her armpit. The show went on.
   Zola Jesus...... felt remote. Before this show, I knew about her, yeah, but not in any great detail. So, I'm getting into her way late. So hearing her now feels like I'm catching up.  So her music will hit me with a certain accumulative sub cultural impact. Hmm, let me clear that up or it's gonna sound like one of them stoner rants. Each song of hers will be felt more because it will have the weight of the established artist. Its 2018 and I'm watching a video of her from 2015, and they mention three albums before. I gotta be careful. There is a time to binge, dive freely into that Youtube worm hole of videos. There is a lot of music to catch up. The impact of the show will resonate. Her voice hits so damn clearly, and it has some real fucking authority and impact. Witness has its moments where its hard to listen, so it has to be a real task to perform it, and it's minimal....fucking wow!! Its so plainly spoken, so the words have the most impact, and no where to escape from them. I hear it later at home and it takes a lot out of me. It was written for a real person close to her life, that tried to commit suicide twice.  As I research for this post I get to know who, she mentions it in one of her live sets in Youtube.  Witness.....one of them powerful songs. Okovi is the new album she tours with. Ash To Bone, Exhumed, Doma are the names of the rounds she fought during her darkest struggles with depression. Soak I have read is about being the victim to a serial killer.  Wow....! So all that is in the words. Her music is over-under-through and around mountains. Its perfect for Nocturna without seeming to intend it. Your body finds its desire to move before you are aware. Her music makes you dance and it lets you feel. Her voice is just powerful and beautiful.  Intimate and gentle like a hovering humming bird indulging its curiosity about you. She can be that small just for you. And that is why shit like Witness can hurt. Its a cathartic surge to have her words and music as a battle cry when we face our own darkest corners of the interior castle. So taken within her own performance, she did walk among and threw herself around the audience. That was fun to have her bounce herself around a won over crowd. Her voice is always so prominent.
  Its a great and necessary thing for us to go and see these artists perform these songs because it means they survived their own darkest stories, giving us the art we use as blue prints or inspiration for how we can over come the same demons.
Zig