VUKOVI conquer their biggest room yet in a victorious, emotional display at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town…
After a decade of grafting, someone hit the fast-forward button on VUKOVI's trajectory. Two-and-a-half years ago, they were playing the O2 Academy Islington up the road. Exactly 357 days ago, they sold out the Electric Ballroom. Now, they’re opulently christening the new songs from the freshly-released MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN in a room with space for over 2,000 fans.
“I’m absolutely shitting my pants,” vocalist Janine Shilstone admits, pacing the stage barefoot in a black catsuit. “London, what the fuck?”
We’ll tell you what’s up: justice is being done.
Artio are here first to warm the crowd up, and the Leeds quartet’s lithe, genre-crushing tunes sound positively crystalline tonight. While Rae Brazill’s powerful vocals pierce the tightest corners of the room, their performance itself perhaps needs just an extra little sparkle. After patrolling like a caged animal through the first couple of songs, Rae later settles and finds their groove, but their inexperience on stages this big does at points creep through.
Next, unpeople make good on the mountain of hype around them. There’s almost instantaneous pitting for the monstrous opener waste and the arcing melodies of going numb summon the crowdsurfers. Frankly, their colossal sound (and volume) belies their relative newness as a band. The quartet’s glee to be here as palpable, as guitarists Jake Crawford and Luke Caley and recently recruited bassist Em Lodge stand axe to axe and bash their strings, before Luke climbs on a punter’s shoulders for some shredding on the explosively summery closer the garden. A phenomenon waiting to happen? Entirely possible.
VUKOVI know how to make an entrance. Opener THIS IS MY LIFE AND MY TRAUMA detonates in a cacophony of meaty riffs and flashing red strobes before Janine appears and slinks through the new album’s punchy lead single GUNGHO. With a stage so big, this ever-underrated frontwoman is more powerful than ever, leaving no inch untouched as she dances, gyrates and takes up – and owns - all the space she’s afforded.
The Ayrshire duo have massive songs to match, too, from the scintillating LASSO (featuring Rae from Artio) to the brass-knuckled CREEP HEAT, while unpeople’s Jake lends some jagged gutturals to MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN. Still, this 70-minute show of strength is far from one-note. SLO comes in like a wrecking ball but the emotional weight of it – a song about Janine’s OCD - is tremendous, while SNO finds her screaming on her knees under the glare of a white spotlight. She comes down and perches on the edge of the stage to sing old favourite Colour Me In and by the end, she’s in tears.
There’s plenty of joy, especially when VUKOVI are connecting with their rowdy yet amiable crowd – who, during the set, pass Janine a toy shark and guitarist Hamish Reilly some Pokémon cards. The defiant I EXIST has those in the stands bouncing, who later sing back the refrain of closer La Di Da loud enough to do their vocal cords some damage. “I’m not going to crowdsurf or this costume will fall apart,” jokes Janine but does it anyway, giggling as she’s safely brought back to stage.
As overwhelming as the prospect of this show may have been, they’ve proved why VUKOVI deserve it so much after 15 years of behind-the-scenes toil and jumping the hurdles of existing as a working-class band who didn’t fit in their local scene. But by harnessing the power of the outsider – and writing plenty of bangers – they’ve proved that sometimes, the cream really does rise to the top.
VUKOVI play RADAR Festival and 2000trees in July
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