Vukovi/Zand – Manchester, Academy 3 – 13 October 2022

By Jase Walker

OK, I’m gonna preface this with the fact that I’ve already been to the first date of this tour in Leeds the day before today’s show, but I wasn’t going to miss two chances to see a band I’ve fallen in love with. Almost immediately after the release of their latest album, ‘NULA’, Vukovi have gotten the hype built up to an unbelievable level and are going to capitalize on that by taking ZAND out for the ride along with them. Multiple dates throughout the ÜK and a few stops in Europe and if last night’s show was anything to go by, Manchester’s crowd has got its work cut out for it!

Admittedly I’m really not keen on ZAND. I appreciate what they’re doing for Queer representation, however. It seems the sound guys are having a bit of trouble balancing their backing track against ZAND’s actual live vocals as sometimes it feels like they’re drowned out by how strong the bass elements are. Looking around as the show goes on though, I can see plenty of people bouncing along, head bobbing as well as the odd one here and there singing along.

ZAND has a pretty well-rehearsed live act as well, each song having its own choreography to some extent which helps drive along how frequently angry some of the songs are. Despite their music missing the mark for me, it’s not hard to see why they’ve struck such a chord with quite a few people at this show. The mix of anti/alt-pop and Queer kink energy works extremely well in its manner of being extremely anti-conventional and getting across messages and topics that challenge norms of sexuality, relationships and societal pressures.

One thing that stood out as well for this show was that they ran into difficulty with their backing track and someone at the front gave them a spare adapter to keep the set going! So to summarize, not one for me, but has clearly caught the attention of many at this show and that’s a definitive win for them.

And to see out Thursday evening for me, my second dose this week of Vukovi! Pretty sure we had a brief false start as the lights went dark, and I could have sworn we had an intro track played but we’re back to filler music. We’ve only just had the opener and someone’s handed Janine some flowers! Without missing a beat we’re right into ‘C.L.A.U.D.I.A’ and we’ve got a massive pit going on right in the middle of the crowd. Fuck yeah, Manchester! Academy 3 is absolutely rammed front to back, a fully sold out show here tonight and the crowd is showing Vukovi they’re here to lose it, especially to the chorus for ‘Hurt’. As you’d expect on this tour, the set list leans extremely heavily on the ‘NULA’ tracks and getting to hear them smashed through like this in a live set is great, the crowd even knows the words to ‘Quench’ already!

This isn’t to say that they’ve forgotten some of their biggest from ‘Fall Better’, as ‘Behave’ followed up by ‘Violent Minds’ sees the pit explode in size and activity, because as Janine puts it, ‘What happens at a Vukovi show? Fuck knows!’. I do love how much freedom Hamish gets to play the hell out of his guitar while bouncing around almost constantly on stage while Janine remains the focal point for most of the show. ‘Hades’ provokes the crowd into mania once again, causing a crowd surge all the way from the back where the sound desk is almost all the way to the front barrier! It’s also noticeable how the vast majority of crowd surfers are women at this show which seems like a solid indicator that they feel safe enough at a Vukovi show to not just do that, but do it extremely often, awesome.

We’ve got a small “interlude” by way of two of their slower and more melancholy songs in the form of ‘I’m Sorry’ and ‘Colour Me In’, the latter persuading the audience to light up the room with their phones without even being prompted! Now as we near the end, ‘I Exist’ which has a proper meaty breakdown in it, even before that though almost the entire centre column of the crowd has gone berserk! And just as I thought, the drop saw an incredible amount of the crowd go mental, a genuinely massive pit that is pretty at odds with the rowing pit that Leeds did last night bizarrely.

As for the last run of songs, going for the throat with the biggest song off ‘NULA’ with ‘Slo’, followed by the Fall Better banger ‘Run/Hide’, and finally their self-titled album’s ‘La Di Da’. I don’t think you could have picked a better run of songs that sums up Vukovi’s knack for writing songs that go hard yet remain unquestionably pop.

A stellar set and a fantastic crowd, Vukovi are in the middle of the biggest strides of their career right now and it’s been a pleasure to catch them two days in a row right at the start of this tour. Since being randomly handed their Fall Better album to review a few years back to them now being one of my absolute favourite bands, Vukovi are well on course to be playing massive venues in a blink of an eye. I truly hope the rest of the tour is bloody fantastic for them, they deserve every ounce of success that’s coming their way.