Ukraine
Ziferblat – Bird of pray
Ukraine rarely sends a bad entry to Eurovision—though some years, it’s felt like they’ve sent merely decent songs and disguised them with dazzling staging, gravity-defying outfits, and a whiff of tactical voting. There’s often been a generous helping of wartime sympathy too, though that effect seemed to dip slightly last year. This time? Who knows. With days still to go, the political winds could shift again.
Bird of Pray is… fine. It’s not reinventing anything, but it’s built to last. Musically, it leans heavily into a very specific Ukrainian art-rock aesthetic: gritty, slightly spacey, full of theatrical emotion and the sense that someone somewhere is playing an instrument you can’t quite identify. It’s more about mood than melody—imagine if the cast of 70s kids show Rainbow had been handed a budget and told to make a documentary about Slavic prog rock, and you’re halfway there.
Ziferblat are not Eurovision newcomers in spirit, if not in fact. Formed back in 2015, they’ve clocked up awards, a stint on Ukraine’s X-Factor (under the mentorship of Verka Serduchka, no less), and even soundtracked a chunk of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. So they’ve got credentials. What they haven’t quite got, at least to my ears, is a song that grabs you by the collar.
Bird of Pray sounds like something you’d find buried deep on side three of a 1970s Led Zeppelin concept album about folk witches. It’s layered and atmospheric, but never especially hooky. It wants to soar, but mostly circles, moodily, above the treetops. If you like your Eurovision entries with grit, growl and a bit of colour-coordinated mystical posturing, this will be your moment. If not, it might all feel a bit too much like being cornered by a man in a leather waistcoat at a record fair.
That said—Ukraine knows how to stage. By the time this hits the St. Jakobshalle, we’ll likely have fire, feathers, slow-motion rain, or a giant metal bird descending from the rigging. None of which will make me like the song more, but it might help a few million others press “vote.”
2 points
