Vukovi pride themselves on walking the road less taken. They might be slightly disappointed to learn that their fourth album, ‘MY GOD HAS A GUN’, is perhaps their most accessible yet, it’s provocation open and inviting to those who seek just a little bit more from their heavy music. However, the Scots have created an album that smashes and tantalises in equal measure, and could be their biggest yet.
Advance single drop ‘GUNGHO’ serves as an apt manifesto for the rest of the record; seductive yet gutsy and laden with enough synth and slam to sink a small ship. It’s on the second teaser track, ‘MISTY ECSTASY’, that where our interest really gets piqued. It’s like three songs mashed into one – a sexual plea, a desert rock scorcher, and Muse before they moved into another galaxy – and it’s the richer for it. It seems Vukovi have exited their angry girl era, skipped over the standard moody piano followup record, and jumped right into the really interesting stuff with ‘MY GOD HAS A GUN’. The rough corners to their sound have been preserved, despite the correlation that we usually spot between increasing popularity and overproduction, and that just adds a touch more gritty reality to Janine Shilstone’s impassioned screams on ‘SNO’.
You have to admire what Vukovi have aimed to construct on this album. The combination of experimental and definite at the same time is intoxicating. A song like ‘FALLEN BEYOND’ is an epic that strides through atmospheric pop, desperation and a whole lot of moody drops, labyrinthine in its aspirations and shrouded sexual narrative. They’ve carved out a niche with painstaking scalpel strokes in the field of modern pain, the light touches combined with chunky bass on ‘FUC KIT UP’ barely concealing an assertive rage. There are lighter moments, like the ethereal tone that opens ‘COWBOY’, but this is overwhelmingly a record about messed up intimacy and the emotional hurt that ensues. Individual sections might sound pretty, but the self-loathing and blame that seeps from this record makes it a raw exploration. Turning this much hatred into gorgeously complex music is a art in itself.
When they do go heavy, it’s enough to shake your fillings loose, just in case you were worried that Vukovi had lost their bite. ‘PEEL’ is a gloriously stomping horror threat that boasts of “sadistic knife crimes” and is bound to stack its entertaining menace high when it’s dropped live. We could have guessed that a song with a cute name would have enough bass to knock you sideways and ‘KITTY’ is the proof, but it only serves to set up for the layers of disjointed melodic nervous that characterise closer ‘BLADED’. Stalking and violence abound but so does a chorus that drags you to new heights and a whole wall of fizzing guitar.
If you were undecided about Vukovi, ‘MY GOD HAS A GUN’ might be enough to convince you that their increasingly established brand of electro-heavy slaps that flirts with evil deserves a place on your playlist. Gliding between cold, dispassionate scorn and emotional pleas for love, between guitar lines that hit like a blunt instrument and deceptively soft floating moments, this is an album that makes it abundantly clear that Vukovi have found their groove and and preparing to ignite audiences with a blast of vicious, cognitively challenging beauty.
KATE ALLVEY