The Ukrainians

"It all began as a lighthearted, one-off bit of fun," the Ukrainians wrote of their beginning, and truer words are rarely spoken. Few could have foreseen that the Wedding Present’s tongue-in-cheek renditions of Ukrainian folk material would blossom into a standalone group that would eventually issue four albums. Already celebrated by 1988 as the Energizer Bunnies of British indie rock, the Leeds-based Wedding Present began weaving the traditional Ukrainian dance tune “Hopak” into their rehearsals that year. Second guitarist Pete Solowka, whose father had left Ukraine years earlier, supplied the piece. When the band taped a BBC session for John Peel, they slipped the song in purely as a lark, never imagining the response it would provoke. They then recruited singer and violinist Len Liggins, a longtime friend of Solowka’s and a student of Slavonic languages, together with authentic Ukrainian mandolinist Roman Remeynes. Three further Peel sessions devoted exclusively to Ukrainian songs followed; the resulting album, Ukrainski Vistupi V Johna Peela, sold 70,000 copies and was later reissued in 2000 with additional tracks as The Ukrainian John Peel Sessions, backed by a nationwide tour.

Energized by the public’s reaction, Solowka departed the Wedding Present in 1991 to launch the Ukrainians alongside Liggins and Remeynes. Their debut single, “Oi Divincho,” earned NME Single of the Week honors, and their self-titled first album—largely original material—soon appeared, after which the trio toured extensively across Europe. Their post-punk edge fused naturally with the fierce emotional charge of Ukrainian music, producing a sound that was abrasive and urgent yet capable of genuine playfulness. That spirit surfaced early in 1993 on the EP Pisni Iz the Smiths, four exuberant Smiths covers reimagined in Ukrainian style and bridging Manchester with Ukraine. Later the same year Vorony arrived, spotlighting fresh original songs alongside a charged reading of the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs,” a track already tinged with Central European atmosphere and now rendered even more vividly. Named Album of the Month by Vox, the record sent the band on a 110-date world tour that included their first U.S. appearances at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival.

In 1994 they released Kultura, another collection rich in the Ukrainians’ distinctive blend of intensity and high spirits, expanded with the Smiths material as bonus content. Following the supporting tour, the group drastically reduced its activity and essentially disappeared for several years. The 2001 album Drink to My Horse!, issued on their own Zirka label, signaled a return, accompanied by a handful of English shows and a Best Of compilation, also on Zirka, that summer. In 2002 they delivered Respublika, a set of traditional Ukrainian songs interspersed with two Sex Pistols covers. Another retrospective, Istoriya, surfaced in 2004, followed by the concert recording Live in Czeremcha in 2008. Diaspora appeared in 2009, and yet another anthology, 20 Years, emerged in 2011. A Short History of Rock Music arrived in 2015, featuring the band’s high-spirited reinterpretations of songs by Nirvana, the Beatles, Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Kaiser Chiefs, Green Day, and others. In the same spirit they issued the four-track EP Shchedryk at the close of 2017, containing their versions of “Carol of the Bells” and “California Dreaming.”