Edinburgh-born and bred Iona Zajac takes to the Voodoo Rooms stage tonight, two days after the release of her debut album Bang, to a bustling crowd that also contains her parents and the next-door neighbours of her childhood.
It’s a cosy and sentimental atmosphere, perfect for puncturing with the performance of her heartwrenching songs—Zajac has the type of lyricism that makes you look down at the floor, pondering everything bad that has ever happened to you and will ever happen to you (this is highly complimentary).
Previously of folk-blues trio Avocet, Zajac began releasing solo material in 2022 with ‘Red Corn Poppies’: a song that was originally a poem, like most of her output. Zajac is poet and musician, musician and poet—her output is rhythmic and sometimes dance-able, but works just the same with lyrics read aloud, completely devoid of any backing. You can revert them back to spoken word, wring them out of any feet-tapping tendencies, then chuck them right back into the washing machine of bass and drum and guitar. Now THAT’S versatility!
Live, she is exceptional: her voice is, for lack of a better word, sad. It’s aching and longing but never submissive—her diction is crystal clear, and her presence is quite daunting. As her set begins, dressed all in black, she is serious in a very entrancing way.
Opener ‘Bowls’ is hypnotically lowkey until it isn’t: the drums and cymbals come crashing in like a tsunami at the ¾ mark, enlivening the audience and priming us for a night of consistently great music with beauty and melancholy in spades.
‘Salt’ is folkish and sorrowful, with its refrain of “the salt I have produced is blue” (also the name of her poetry collection). “It troubles me I’m looking back the wrong way” is delivered so delicately, despite being a Line For The Ages when it comes to the simplicity of the post-break up illogicality. You can’t look back! That’s the wrong way!
Discussing the themes of Bang, Zajac tells the crowd: “It’s a real celebration of young womanhood… I hope it brings some catharsis and some joy because [being a young woman] can be the best, but it can also be really fucking hard.”
Preach—and thus begins ‘Anton’, her indisputably best song. It’s a blunt and brutal portrait of a man/boy: something to do with the evergreen issue of young sex and consent, and the legacy of a relationship built on not-quite-love. It allows Zajac’s vocals to really pierce through, and that “fuck” during the bridge makes your breath catch; the minimalism of her music is made for moments like this, where the emotion breaks the surface and breaks your heart. The song descends into raw-throated screaming—it really is, as she hoped, cathartic.
Following the sheer intensity of ‘Anton’, Zajac pledges to “bring up the vibe”, closing with boppy little number ‘Murder Mystery’ (which also ends with some simultaneous screaming from the entire band). It is slinky and Scandi-noir inspired… a fitting end to a performance of such a sad but stylish catalogue. Very Scandinavian!
Image by Zillah Rauter, provided to The Student to use as press by Prescription PR.