Cathartic, electric: Zola Jesus leaves it all on the stage at Trees

About halfway through her volcanic set Wednesday night at Trees, the powerhouse pop singer Zola Jesus mentioned that she has a soft spot in her heart for Dallas. The reason: One of her heroes, the opera legend Maria Callas, performed here years back, and Zola Jesus, born Nika Roza Danilova, is a master of performative drama.

She's also possessed of a huge, rangy voice, and she used it to haunting effect Wednesday for a sparse but rapt crowd. Backed by an ethereal wall of sound created by keyboards, trombone and heavy drums, she consistently cut through the dense noise and located the melody and emotion in a collection of songs both somber and elating.

Her latest release, Taiga (that's a subarctic forest region), is a bit of a departure for the Russian-American singer from Wisconsin: more beat-driven than her previous work, at times even anthemic. "Dangerous Days," which she played at the beginning of Wednesday's show, qualifies as hummable gothic. But there's something rich and knotty at the core of even her more upbeat tracks.

Zola Jesus moves with a violent, calibrated grace onstage, throwing her body into the cathartic moments of each song. She often stood still at the center of the stage, then fell to one knee or prowled like a panther. Her long hair flew in frenzied patterns; her limbs jerked this way and that. At the end of the encore she literally crawled off the stage; the theatricality was impressive, but she was likely exhausted as well. Like Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Zola Jesus leaves it all on the stage.

She has star material, and at 25 she's just reaching her prime. There should be plenty more rough magic ahead.