How war and separation led Lucidvox to level up

Not long after Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled into eastern Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian band scattered westwards: singer and flautist Alina Evseeva moved to Israel and guitarist Galla Gintovt to her in-laws’ home in southern Germany, while drummer Nadya Samodurova and bassist Anna Moskvitina have built new lives for themselves in Serbia. It’s at their apartment in Belgrade that I find them all together, gathered around Moskvitina’s propped up phone. It’s a stiflingly hot day and the women are outside in the shade, on a small terrace, trying to catch what little breeze there might be puffing around after a sweaty five-hour rehearsal.

It’s the last of the precious few days they’ve had together for this brief reunion, as Evseeva is due to fly back to Tel Aviv in a matter of hours, and it seems they haven’t wanted to waste a second of it. First they played a festival warm-up show in Budapest, then, last night, a Belgrade show in Cold War bunker turned underground rock club KC Živa, with some special guest appearances from other self-exiled musicians from Russia. As Lucidvox explain, the city has become a sort of proxy for the Moscow underground scene, almost by accident it seems. Neither Samodurova nor Moskvitina had been to the city before they decided to move there, and they knew almost nobody. What they’ve found, though, is a place that feels increasingly like home. “I think it’s a very special city and country,” says Samodurova. “People here have been so kind, and the culture’s very interesting.”

Although they have only released two albums internationally – 2020’s We Are and last year’s That’s What Remained – Lucidvox have been together for a little over 10 years now. They originally formed as a joke, partly as a reaction to having boyfriends who played in bands. “Every time they played together it looked like they were having so much fun, but it wasn’t so fun for us I think,” says Gintovt. “We started the band because we wanted to have something interesting that we could do together, but then it became the most important thing in our lives,” she says, looking around for approval, and they all agree, laughing.

While Moskvitina had some experience playing bass and Evseeva had been to music school, where she’d been classically trained on flute, Gintovt and Samodurova were starting from scratch. Their first rehearsals in Moscow were made up of covers of bands like Warpaint, The White Stripes, Pixies and Can, but their own songs came thick and fast. A little over 6 months after starting to write, they’d already recorded their first EP of Lucidvox originals, and a second one shortly after that. You can’t find those online these days, legally at least. Their 2016 debut album V Dvizhenii (In Movement), is also off streaming, and the band seem quite okay with that. “I think we didn’t spend long enough on the songs,” says Samodurova, shrugging. “We were just like, ‘Let’s go!’” “We are working on them for much longer now,” Evseeva adds, laughing.

Those early songs might have lacked the depth and sophistication of Lucidvox’s more recent work, but they were raw and powerful enough for the band to find themselves part of a surging underground movement that came to be known as ‘New Russian Wave’. It was a hard-edged sound; blunt and abrasive, but often beautiful, combining elements of post-punk, goth, psychedelic rock and ‘80s new wave, cleverly written and – crucially – sung in the Russian language. “Russians didn’t want to pretend anymore to be like English bands,” says Samodurova.

“We didn’t have as many music magazines as others had in Europe, and the ones we did have wouldn’t publish anything about underground music,” she continues, explaining how the scene bubbled up through music blogs that sprang up through the VK platform, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. “The only way to find an audience was to get written about on some blog in VK and hope that people might find your music, and that maybe some promoter will invite you to play.”

Off the back of their first album, Lucidvox quite quickly became a known entity outside of Russia. In 2017 they were invited to play Tallinn Music Week, at the historical House of the Blackheads with its Instagram-famous, gold-flowered door, where they “basically blasted everything to pieces.” Later in the year they made their debut at Pop-Kultur festival in Berlin, which Samodurova remembers as being “a really special moment.” “It was our first big festival in Europe and there was someone waiting for us at the airport with our band name written on a sign, which we’d never had before,” she says, grinning. “And when we went to the hotel there was a red carpet out front. It wasn’t for us of course, but we felt like we were stars!”

Another favourite memory of Pop-Kultur in 2017 was playing the same stage as IDLES, and the bands have stayed in touch, seeing each other a few times over the years. Later this month, for Pop-Kultur’s tenth edition, Lucidvox are invited back as part of an excitingly diverse and boundary-pushing line-up, and they’re excited to return to Berlin’s sprawling, multi-venue Kulturbrauerei (‘culture brewery’). Boosted by an Iggy Pop co-sign and rave reviews for That’s What Remained upon its release last November, the band are on a whole other level than they were 7 years ago. Their songs are heavier – often feverishly so, sometimes bordering on metal – and stacked with new layers of complexity and mushrooming drama. Scratching the adrenaline itch can only get you so far artistically, and Lucidvox have fully understood the assignment. For every glorious flashpoint of intensity, there’s an equally glorious moment of filmic ataraxia, where the magnetic storm clouds part and the cosmos comes (briefly) into balance.

Their music may sometimes threaten to spill over into a nauseous disequilibrium, but there’s nothing wavering about Lucidvox’s vision. That’s What Remained is, at its heart, an album that strives for clarity and connection on a deep-set level. It’s an album that wants to be understood, full of grown-up songs about what it means to grow up and take the reins of your own hope, set against a backdrop of alienation enforced by the global pandemic and the outbreak of Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine. The song “All Frozen” is a prime example. Originally written about the Covid lockdowns, it’s taken on a new meaning since the conflict started. They may not be shut in their homes any longer, but the sense of being at a standstill lingers in their minds. As Samodurova explains, “It’s a different kind of frozen now, because even though we’ve moved to Europe we still feel stuck. We feel stuck in our heads, in a way, because we don’t know what to do with this changed situation. We don’t know how we will exist, and I don’t mean day-by-day but in a more global sense. What is it that we need to do in our lives? I don’t know yet.”

Like many of their friends in the Russian underground scene, Lucidvox spoke up early against the war in Ukraine on social media, recognising the critical importance of the moment. Still, like many other peaceful Russians, they have been on the sharp end of an indiscriminating cancel culture that leaves little room for nuance. As well as being shunned by certain promoters and receiving “shitty comments” on social media, the band’s audience on streaming platforms has noticeably shrunk, though Samodurova points out that this probably has a lot to do with their physical absence from Russia as well.

The tumultuous fan favourite “Don’t Look Away” is ostensibly an anti-war song, but it can also be interpreted as a crashing plea for people to interrogate their own behaviours and stop blanket banning artists in response to their government’s crimes. It’s also about far more than just Russia. “War is a part of the world situation, and people in many countries are becoming more fascistic, so the song is about being brave, to not close your eyes to the problems,” says Gintovt. “The world’s many problems didn’t start with Russia and Ukraine.” Evseeva agrees, describing her current situation in Tel Aviv as “very difficult.” “I’m in another place where it’s not so easy to survive,” she says. “I don’t like this point of view that life is about ‘surviving’, so it’s really sad.”

In that sense, the snowdrops pictured on the sleeve of That’s What Remained are perfectly symbolic. “I trust and I hope and I know courage,” sings Evseeva on the soaring lament of the title track, and you don’t need to speak Russian to feel the truth in what she’s saying. This world is full of heartbreak, pain and senseless discrimination that will drive you to the edge of despair, even drive you from your home, but there’s always a reason to keep hanging on. Through art and communion, we can survive. With courage, we can grow. With hope, we can remain.