Gogol Bordello reviewed

Gogol Bordello
Super Taranta!
(Side One Dummy)

Gogol Bordello are to East-European folk what The Tossers are to Irish music, only now they’re caught in a time warp.

Appearing: July 15th at Vic Theatre in Chicago.

Suddenly and inexplicably Gypsy music is hip. It has always had a place anywhere rock bands could stick an accordion, but 2007 is different. DeVotchKa, Andrew Bird, and Beirut are riding high, and Gogol are at the Vic. But where the others approach the nomadic culture romantically and from the outside, GB’s Eugene Hutz has more intimate knowledge of the subject. A Chernobyl evacuee, from 1986 on Hutz lived as a refugee in Poland and Hungary and learned the music that way, imbuing in it a punk sense that’s as much System Of A Down as it is Romanian brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia.

Hutz, who often sings like an angry, Ukranian Mark Knopfler, guides the spazzy Super Taranta!, the group’s fifth album, through an hour that compacts every musical style north of the equator from the California coast to the Balkan Sea. “Your Country” sires angry funk from repressive societies; “Dub The Frequencies Of Love” marries the reggae offshoot with Manu Chao’s frenetic energy; and “Alcohol” stammers slightly, but gains momentum as the group lock arms and spit at the fermented demon. Occasionally working against Taranta is its length, but seeing as real Gypsies know no borders you can hardly fault it.

7

— Steve Forstneger

Click here to watch Gogol Bordello back Madonna at Live Earth.

Category: Spins, Weekly