Best New Tracks - Pitchfork

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Zola Jesus: "Fall Back" Posted: 14 Aug 2013 01:44 PM PDT "I realized I didn't have to bark, scream, or turn myself inside out… I could express the songs dynamically, which was something I was afraid to do before." That's what Zola Jesus' Nika Roza Danilova told Pitchfork while discussing a moment of clarity that followed a 2012 performance at the Guggenheim with JG Thirlwell. That performance resuilted in Versions, a new LP featuring Thirlwell's classical rearrangements of Zola Jesus songs (out August 20 via Sacred Bones). "Fall Back" is the sole new song on Versions, and it represents Danilova's realization of dynamic possibility in musical form, a soaring, well-paced declaration of love. She enters "Fall Back" lightly and quietly, accompanied by seasick, ominous strings that give way to booming, spacious percussion. "I would do anything to be the one with you," she repeats, with that keening string line hanging over her like a bad omen. It's a sustained peak that feels natural and earned, as "Fall Back" is an enjoyable glimpse at Danilova exploring new dynamic expression. Zola Jesus: "Fall Back" on SoundCloud.

Neko Case: "Night Still Comes" Posted: 14 Aug 2013 08:27 AM PDT After proving on "Man" that she could write New Pornographic power pop with the best of them, Neko Case returns to more familiar territory on "Night Still Comes". The song inhabits the same odd netherworld where so many of her songs are set; fifteen years after her debut, she's settled into this simultaneously stark and lush sound comfortably. Which is not to say she's repeating herself, since Case always manages to reveal some new topographical feature in this terrain, and so "Night Still Comes" features not only a parallax layering of voices but also a wryly incisive self-reckoning that's not bound to any concrete confessional language. "If I puked up some sonnets/ Would you call me a 'miracle'?" she asks with signature frankness. But it's that cathedral chorus that may be the most revealing and confounding: "You never held it at the right angle." Whatever "it" is, she's still looking for the right angle herself. [from The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You; out 09/03/13 via ANTI-]