In 2010, a bright-eyed 21-year-old Janine Shilstone went to London to try out for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical adaptation of The Wizard Of Oz. With a passion for musical theatre and a yearning to escape into fantasy worlds, it seemed like becoming Dorothy was her destiny - but then, she realised her heart wasn’t in it.
“I got down to the last 21 girls, but I hated it,” she recalls of the auditions. “Once I was singing for Andy, and he said, ‘I can tell you’re not enjoying this. You want to be yourself – you’re a rock star.’”
For the last 14 years, Janine’s been the rock star frontwoman of Scottish pop-metallers Vukovi. Onstage, she shines, and is far more chaotic than a poised performer in a Webber production. Powered by Buckfast, she stagedives and goads the crowd into a frenzy with the rallying battlecry, “LET’S FUCKIN’ GOOOOO!” But scratch beneath the sass, and you’ll find Janine’s introspective side, evident on all three of Vukovi’s albums.
On 2017’s self-titled debut and 2020’s Fall Better, she explored toxic relationships and the pressures of social conformity, and expressed suicidal thoughts on the latter with the heartbreaking I’m Sorry. For 2022’s Nula, she stepped things up a gear, addressing similar themes – and her OCD diagnosis – via a concept about the title’s character being held captive in a sci-fi world. Its single, I Exist, saw a more hopeful Janine sing: ‘You’ve gotta stay, you’ll be glad one day / And you know that better days will come to light.’
Chatting to Hammer today from a studio, where she’s working on a secret collab with a friend, anxiety is kicking in. Vukovi – Janine and lead guitarist Hamish Reilly – are about to release their fourth album, My God Has Got A Gun, their first for new label Sharptone.
“Talking about the record is a bit of a reality check,” Janine admits. “It’s a piece of myself, and it’s terrifying to think it’s going to be out in the world.”
With Nula’s sci-fi concept abandoned, My God Has Got A Gun begins with the operatic declaration: ‘This is my life and my trauma.’ It’s surprising, candid and dry – classic Janine.
“Opening on that, singing about ‘my trauma’ like it was holy and operatic, was a joke at first,” Janine laughs. “We were in the kitchen discussing the record, and I just started singing it. But we recorded it because… well, it is exactly what the record is about.”
Bursting with unnerving synths and frazzled screams, My God… feels like an uncontrollable descent into a tormented mind. Janine is lyrically volatile, flitting between gut-wrenching depression, bruised innocence and sensual lust. It’s her unfiltered self.
“When we were writing the album, I had just started going through some quite intense therapy,” she explains. “This record tracks my journey of purging all the shit that I’ve been carrying around for years. It’s like an exorcism of the darkness inside of me.”
You can see it in the album artwork, which Janine painted in the emotionally raw aftermath of a therapy session. The red and black piece oozes an unspeakable pain, almost like an abstract depiction of a bloody crime scene, and features a figure with dark hair.
“It’s this entity that I kept going back to,” she explains. “It felt like she was a part of me that was darker, but she could handle all the shit I try to separate from… I call her Sno.”
Not only does Sno appear in the artwork, there’s a track named after her. It’s the most intense one, with Janine acknowledging her inner child, wishing for emotional disassociation, and wondering who could love her, as her feelings reach a crescendo.
“That song is the hardest song to listen to and perform,” Janine admits. “It’s about forgiving yourself and the things that have happened to you. It’s the result of someone that’s been traumatised and is in survival mode.”
OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder, is a mental health condition where a person experiences obsessive thoughts and feels driven to perform repetitive behaviours or mental acts to relieve their anxiety. While Janine was diagnosed in 2018, she had struggled with OCD traits since her early childhood. She refers to Sno as an “alter ego”, a side of her personality capable of combating her past traumas and spiteful thoughts.
“Sno was something I created as protection,” she says. “Onstage, I’d say I’m more like Sno, because I’ve got no fear. She’s not soft, she’s not vulnerable, she’ll fucking kill you to survive. It’s a barrier I can hide behind.”
Compartmentalisation and escapism have been some of Janine’s most powerful coping methods over the years. From distracting herself with musical theatre and sci-fi movies in her youth, to finding solace in a story-based album like Nula, she’s sought out ways to detach from pain.
“It’s always felt safer to lose myself in creative worlds,” she admits. “With my type of OCD, I often liken it to religion. It feels like there’s something that follows me around and punishes me or rewards me for certain behaviours – which is similar to the idea of God always watching, punishing you for your sins. It has that same element of control.”
Hence the album title: My God Has Got A Gun. Janine feels hounded by an omnipresent OCD presence holding a barrel flush against her temple, finger weighing on the trigger. Fuc Kit Up captures it best, with ominous electronics bolstered by rumbling riffs as Janine begs the tormentor in her mind to ‘put me out of my misery’. The video for standalone single Mercy Kill was filmed in a church; Janine worships an unseen deity before being asphyxiated by something shadowy,
Ultimately, My God… sees Janine learning to love herself, a process she had started during the Nula cycle, and documented on I Exist. On that song, she declared she wanted to ‘find myself while I’m alive’.
“With Nula, I had started to get some help,” she admits. “Before then, there were points where I didn’t see a future for myself. But Nula was me admitting, ‘I can’t live like this, and I want to be happy.’”
“It does make me quite sad listening back, because I realise how much I was tortured by it. During the first album, I was so lost. My mental health was so bad, and the only thing that helped me was writing music and creating. I was too immature to think I needed any therapy.”
Cowboy is perhaps Vukovi’s most vulnerable song to date, Janine acknowledging she is worthy of love.
“Going to therapy made me realise that maybe I wasn’t involving myself in ‘healthy love’. Cowboy is about when you meet someone that is very good for you, and your mind tells you that you don’t deserve it,” she says, a flicker of sadness on her face. “It’s battling against that gut feeling that you fucking deserve someone shite, that you need to self-sabotage and run.”
The distress on My God… is balanced out with some absolute bangers – how would Janine be able to howl “LET’S FUCKIN’ GOOOO!” if she was sobbing the entire time? Onstage, she loves to play the temptress, dancing in playful mesh bodysuits with a maniacal glint in her eye. While Nula track Quench was enough to have your mother gripping at her pearls, lead single Gungho is a fantasy about fucking and getting choked by Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. Misty Ecstasy offers even more explicit content and a ton of blissful energy.
“I’ll joke about having someone ‘fuck me like a siren’ – I enjoy the tongue-in-cheek sexuality,” she grins. “It’s fun, it’s flirty and it’s another way of allowing myself to feel desirable.”
As Andrew Lloyd Webber recognised all those years ago, Janine is herself. She’s a rock star. And while she’s still on her journey of self-discovery, she hopes My God… will make people feel alive on theirs. “We wanted this album to help people, but also be a bit of a celebration,” she says. “It’s ultimately an amalgamation of a human just trying to fucking get by and trying to exist.”
My God Has A Gun is out now via Sharptone. Vukovi play London's Kentish Town Forum tonight (March 7) and Manchester's O2 Ritz on March 8, as well as 2000 Trees this summer. If you need someone to talk to, call Samaritans free on 116 123.
