Skverna – Butovo & Привет красавица
“Band biographies are usually boring to ugly, and after reading them, you feel sorry for the writer, so we’ll try to keep it short.” This is how the bio of Skverna, a power trio with songs about про котов, партизан и всяческую сумятицу – cats, partisans, and all kinds of confusion – begins on their VK page.
There isn’t much more to say about Skverna (also Скверна, but not to be confused with this). The number of views on their YouTube channel would be higher if only their mothers checked it out once a month. Too bad for those moms. Help out the sons and do yourself a favor: this comes highly recommended.
Бутово
From Долгие проводы (2019).
Butovo is the name of a district in Moscow (just outside the МКАД or ring road), large enough for a North and South. It’s also an area with a lot of history. Though the song isn’t about that, it’s worth knowing.
- Mass Grave in Moscow Suburbs is Among Russia’s Holiest Sites (The Moscow Times, 2014)
- The Butovo Shooting Range (SciencesPo, 2009)
- Former Killing Ground Becomes Shrine to Stalin’s Victims (The New York Times, 2007)
- Butovo firing range (Wikipedia)
Lyrics available on the track page on Bandcamp.
Привет красавица
From Привет (2017).
A hello to a beautiful girl – for more details, you’ll have to listen and hopefully understand. The lyrics weren’t found online, but they’ll be posted below as soon as the email currently waiting in Moscow is kindly answered (Привет Скверна).
More on Bandcamp and Facebook. You can also listen on Apple Music and Spotify.
Most of the music here is also available in an
R1 playlist on YouTube (in the order of posting).
Also see
Best Russian Music and
Russian Song Lyrics.
More
Music
Anyone who wants to present Russian music cannot ignore Zemfira. Popular and mainstream – millions of records sold – but also distinctly idiosyncratic. The music is usually accessible (we categorize it under Pop), but the attitude is rock.
Raw Anti-Putin punk from
Nizhny Novgorod /
Нижний Новгород. Loosely based on ‘Maggie’ by The Exploited.
From the green city of
Zelenograd /
Зеленоград. Dreamy indie-folk with a melancholic undertone. Created by
Mikhail Rodionov (1992).
The alarm blares (Ревёт тревога), the road awaits (ждёт дорога). They are many (Их немало), we are few (нас немного). We are in an unjust world (Мы в несправедливом мире) tin wolves in the shooting range (Жестяные волки в тире).
The word offret is Swedish and means ‘sacrifice’; the band Offret is Russian and makes heavy music. The link between the word and the band: a
1986 film in Swedish by the Russian Andrei Tarkovsky.
A band from Saint Petersburg that makes a kind of post-punk/indie-pop. Not for long yet, so not much material yet. However, they already have a few very successful tracks with original music videos. До свиданья, дорогая is the
Russian title for the film
The Goodbye Girl (1977), but it has nothing to do with it.
