We bang on about it a lot, but the global pandemic really did throw everything into disarray, forcing many a band to put down their touring gear and throw out their carefully planned itineraries. When Vukovi were forced to take a breather just months after dropping an album – what did they do?
“I watched so much sci-fi!” enthuses Janine Shilstone, beaming in from her bedroom in Scotland. “I rewatched all the Alien boxset, Star Wars, Fifth Element. It was escapism over lockdown from reality, and I loved it.”
Don’t worry, readers; Janine wasn’t nerding out for nothing. With no way to perform their second album ‘Fall Better’ live, Janine and guitarist Hamish Reilly banged their heads together and made a new record instead. And, it just so happens to be a concept record about “a colony ship” leaving “our earth that’s dying” – and there’s an “alien who was kidnapped on board”, too.
“I ended up injecting escapism into the album with this otherworldly space concept. I really want folk to imagine being there like they’re on this journey to the unknown,” explains Janine, who spent her lockdown walking down memory lane and doing a lot of self-realisation, which was fed right back into the songwriting.
“Sci-fi was such a huge thing for me growing up, comics and anime, and the pandemic makes you reflect – like, wait a minute, I loved all these things, it’s almost a core for me, so why am I not talking about it more or expressing it more or putting it into our music more?”
Like all good sci-fi adventures, ‘Nula’ leaves a lot to the listener’s imagination. There’s no ‘spoon-feeding’ from Vukovi on this one, they’ll help you along here and there, but this album is yours for interpreting. Take the title – it could be a reference to Irish folklore, meaning the perfect embodiment of elegance and etherealness. Except, no, it’s not.
“I went with ‘Nula’ because it’s Serbian for zero, and Vukovi is Serbian for wolves, so it’s like she’s the original, she’s from scratch,” Janine corrects, but she’s happy people are going off and doing some Googling. “This is the beauty of it, someone who’s heard the album has done their own research and looked for their own reason. That’s the beauty of watching sci-fi; I love the escapism, the want to find the core and the root of something.”
In a way, ‘Nula’ meaning zero makes a lot of sense. It feels like Vukovi are starting from scratch. This isn’t the band you heard push out synth-driven pop-punk on ‘Fall Better.’ This is futuristic alt-pop with rollercoaster riffs to ride through the cosmos on.
“It is a pop record! We want to be pop. I fucking love pop – it was my life growing up,” beams Janine, pleased to hear their guilty pleasure for pop isn’t putting anyone off. “That’s something I feel like I’ve watered down a lot. I’ve always wanted to go extreme pop, but then I thought, it’s not very cool, but now I love crossing genres. I want to cross over into the mainstream; I want to be a pop act.”
Whether it’s the Katy Perry-inspired futurism of ‘SLO”s pulsing synths or the dance-punk club banger ‘QUENCH’, it’s undeniably pop that bites back. Starting life out as just another riff on the cutting room floor, ‘QUENCH’ was “far too good to just write off”. Thankfully, binge-listening to Britney Spears saved the song. “Randomly, I was listening to Britney Spears that week, so I was like, let’s just go for Britney verses. Then I wanted Bobby Brown harmonies in the chorus to give it that 90s feel.”
So, if they were so comfortable leaning into pop music, just how did it all happen? Well, rather than rest on their laurels, they used their forced retirement from the road to reassess what it was to be Vukovi.
“We threw ourselves into bettering our songwriting and our craft. It was a sink or swim moment, we can’t fucking play shows, and we can’t leave the house, so let’s make our best music yet – it was very liberating to be unapologetically ourselves.
“You have that existential crisis of, what the fuck am I doing in my life? What is going to happen, and what’s the future? At that point, I felt like I had a lot of personal traumas that came to the surface, so that was something I had to face and finally get help for and try and be a better version of myself. I’ve made some positive life changes, and it’s helped the band too. Life is very fucking short; it made us think, how can we be the best we can be?”
Not only did all that self-reflection make them better musically, it gave Janine the chance to empower others. ‘Nula”s story might spend its time sailing the stars, but its themes explore trauma, mental health, gender inequality, sexual liberation, and violence. And with the world the way it is, Janine just had to say something.
While ‘QUENCH’ is “all about female empowerment for women that have been through trauma” to tell them “it’s okay to have desires, that’s fine, that’s okay”, closer ‘xx’ asks the listener to reckon with a question: what does the future hold?
“When you talk about my experiences in the industry and talk to other women about their experiences, you start to paint this picture of misogyny. I think there’s a massive imbalance of gender roles, especially in power and politics, and I’m not a fucking political expert, but there’s a lot of toxic masculinity in the world.
“I just want these songs to help the next generation of female and non-binary people to be like, ‘this is fucking badass’. I’m trying to inspire young women, young girls and non-binary people to believe in making that change because we just can’t stay this way. It’s very fucking scary right now, there’s just so much toxicity and ego, and that’s what happens when you have an imbalance of gender.”
‘xx’ isn’t just ‘Nula”s defining statement; it’s a standout moment for Vukovi. Originally written to include a two-minute monologue by Lady Gaga that was eventually quashed by her management, it forced Janine into writing her own empowering speech in just two days. “I did it on a train coming home, and when I went into the studio with Bruce and Hamish, they told me to do it in my voice, in my accent. I really didn’t want to do that, but they really pushed me to do that, and I’m glad we did, because I wanted it to be that Trainspotting ‘choose life’ kind of theme.”
In the end, that’s what Vukovi embody on ‘Nula’: they’re choosing life, and this is their soundtrack.
Taken from the October issue of Upset. Vukovi’s album ‘Nula’ is out 7th October.
