With Balkans being what it is, there is a certain amount of underlying sexism permeating virtually every strain of society. Not necessarily of the Gilead sort (although there is plenty of that, too), but more in terms of how, for example, the conversation on musicians tends to assume they are male, unless it is specified that musicians in question are, well, female musicians. And there is a lot of that when the conversation touches upon Punčke.
Punčke/Dolls is, you will not be surprised to hear, an all-female rock band from central Croatia. Specifically, towns of Vinkovci, Sisak and Novska. Well, it used to be an all-female rock band. Things changes over the course the last few years. But not that it matters, really. Their name aside, it was always their music and not their gender, that defined Punčke
Punčke
Google them, and you will mostly find Punčke billed as a punk band. But that is not nearly the whole story. They could just as well be described as an alt-rock, indie or maybe even grunge band. All of this is by design, as they are actively eschewing a single descriptor.
Punčke came about in 2007, back then truly as an exclusively female group. Lucija Ivšić and Ena Bačanović were the two founding members who started by covering the Ramones. But when they moved to Croatian capital Zagreb, they met Anja Tkalec and became a trio.
The trio quickly became a mainstay of Croatian underground, earning them both mileage and fanbase. And their standing was cemented in 2014, when Queens of the Stone Age invited them to be their warm-up act for the band’s Slovenian and Croatian leg of their tour.
Punčke released their first ever EP in 2012. But a full-blown debut album followed in 2013. Titled Sunčano s povremenom naoblakom / Sunny With Scattered Clouds, it won them both praise for their music as well as the the fact they released it independently
The success of their inaugural album, which delighter both fans and critics alike, spurred them into recording a follow-up album titled Ništa nije kako se čini/Nothing is what it seems.
Some time after that, Ena Bačanović left the band and Goran Njezić joined Punčke as a drummer, increasing the gender fluidity of the band. And together, they released another short EP, titled Vidimo se/See Ya, in 2019.
And that’s all the time we have for this week. Check out Punčke on YouTube, Bandcamp and wherever you get your music from. And Balkan Express will be back next week.
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Balkan Express brings you the latest and/or the greatest in music from the Balkans. On air every Tuesday at 11am on Ara City Radio, it is hosted by Aljaž aka @pengovsky who once did the world a solid and vowed never to sing again in public. Which is how he ended up doing radio.