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Oct 14, 2014This is what it sounds like when an artist matures, discovers a confidence they perhaps never knew they had, and return, revitalised.
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Oct 1, 2014It’s that sense of balance--the epic and the intimate, the light and the shade, the coldness and the warmth--that puts Taiga in contention with Stridulum II as Zola Jesus’ best work, the purest distillation of an ever-searching soul.
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Oct 13, 2014Taiga is a more mainstream album than people may be used to from Zola Jesus. But that is not a bad thing.
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Oct 6, 2014It is without doubt Zola Jesus’ most heartfelt utterance to date, the emotion coming from her very bones--a case where you really can see the wood for the trees.
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Oct 1, 2014She's used all the tools accrued over her career to craft an impressively versatile and sprawling goth pop album that simultaneously her most adventurous and accessible to date. [Sep/Oct 2014, p.80]
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Oct 1, 2014Taiga is more of an achievement than that; it’s the mark of someone who has truly taken their time over their work. Cooped up in a friend’s holiday home in Washington, Nika Roza Danilova crafted a small slice of perfection.
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Oct 8, 2014Taiga is better-produced and differently arranged than 2010’s “Poor Animal,” but it’s no more or less “pop.”
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Oct 17, 2014Even if it's not her most intimate work, Taiga allows Nika to be inventive and craft some some stunningly beautiful moments along the way.
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Oct 15, 2014When we’re not soaring we’re wrapped in ambient solemnity, all the while fixated on Nika Danilova’s voice: theatrical, confessional and, perhaps for the first time, totally unafraid.
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Oct 10, 2014Taiga marks Danilova’s own internal struggle to continue to carve out her own musical path. And so far, so good.
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Oct 6, 2014Gloomy as it is, there are some brilliant flashes of light to be found here.
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Oct 3, 2014For an ambitious release that obviously reaches for such lofty heights, Taiga is peculiarly light on hooks and personality, forcing Danilova to fill many of those gaps in with glittering aural cosmetics.
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MagnetNov 5, 2014Most squarely accessible record to date, and easily the most pop album to come from an alumnus of Sacred Bones. [No. 114, p.61]
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Oct 7, 2014Taiga is an attempt at putting what it is that’s personal--vocals and lyrics--in the forefront, which is important, but it’s banished a mood and kind of mystery from everything.
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Oct 7, 2014Gone are the darker, more gothic underpinnings of her previous efforts, replaced by a shimmering, gossamer pop sheen that carries with it only shadow elements of her former sound.
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Q MagazineOct 3, 2014Danilova's vocals occasionally get bogged own in the contemporary pop production, but this foray from murky fringes into the mainstream deserves success. [Nov 2014, p.121]
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UncutOct 1, 2014At times the elemental pounding can become an aural bludgeoning. [Oct 2014, p.80]
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Oct 8, 2014Too many songs on Taiga come across as filler—too small and formulaic to impress at "taiga" scale, but too leaden to reach anthemic heights.
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Oct 10, 2014Zola Jesus has a firm grip on the magnificence her songs can accomplish. Without the threat of failure, though, that beauty runs too smooth.
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Oct 3, 2014Though Taiga ends on something of a high, in all it comes across as a wholly wasted opportunity that, with a few lessons in moderation and restraint, could have been something altogether more impressive.
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Oct 15, 2014Too much of the LP sounds like someone cranked up the brightness setting on her early work, destroying what made her unique in the process.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 19 out of 26
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Mixed: 2 out of 26
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Negative: 5 out of 26
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Oct 7, 2014