Zola Jesus has announced details of her new album, Okovi, due out in September via Sacred Bones. Above, you can hear lead single ‘Exhumed’.
The album’s release on September 8 comes ahead of a headline show at London’s Village Underground on November 7 with more European tour dates to be announced in the coming months in support of the album.
Okovi features contributions from the musician’s longtime live bandmate Alex DeGroot, Tri-Angle signee WIFE, cellist Shannon Kennedy from Pedestrian Deposit and percussionist Ted Byrnes. The record marks Zola Jesus’ return to Sacred Bones following the 2014 release of her last album, Taiga, through Mute.
Speaking about the album, she said: "Last year, I moved back to the woods in Wisconsin where I was raised. I built a little house just steps away from where my dilapidated childhood tree fort is slowly recombining into earth. Okovi was fed by this return to roots and several very personal traumas.
While writing Okovi, I endured people very close to me trying to die, and others trying desperately not to. Meanwhile, I was fighting through a haze so thick I wasn’t sure I’d find my way to the other side. Death, in all of its masks, has been encircling everyone I love, and with it the questions of legacy, worth, and will.
"Okovi is a Slavic word for shackles. We’re all shackled to something—to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back. Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?
"This album is a deeply personal snapshot of loss, reconciliation, and a sympathy for the chains that keep us all grounded to the unforgiving laws of nature. To bring it to life, I decided to enlist the help of Alex DeGroot, who has been the only constant in my live band and helped mix the Stridulum EP back in 2010. It will be released on Sacred Bones, the closest group of people I’ll ever have to blood-bound family."
