Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike (2004)
15 tracks, 63 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes
The first time I heard Gogol Bordello, their name had been floating around for a little while without me actually getting them in my ears, but their song ‘I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again’ was the first track on a Songlines covermount CD. It was so different from anything I would have expected from the magazine but it was electrifying. It starts with choppy, distorted guitars, joined by swirls of sawing fiddles and then a blood-curling, agonised scream before the song itself actually kicks off. What a way to grab the attention!
The band’s first two albums had already made them stars of the New York scene, but this album is what really blew them up around the world, and even started a bit of a vogue for Eastern European music among hip circles. The album’s title Gypsy Punks was really the perfect phrase for people to latch onto: it’s quirky and unexpected, but it also gives you a very clear idea of what they sound like. And it’s a combination that works really well – there’s something about Eastern European and Romani folk music that lends itself so well to the thrashing and screaming of punk, and Gogol Bordello pull it off flawlessly.
They actually bring in a much wider variety of sounds than you would actually expect from the album title, too. Punk is obviously the order of the day, but there are very strong elements of ska, dub and hip-hop all the way through, which blend just as well and only serve to add to the band’s globetrotting image.
An important part of listening to Gogol Bordello is not to take anything about them too seriously. Everything about them is a joke, or exaggerated or diminished for comic effect, or at least has the potential to be. I’ve seen them live a couple of times, but the best one (at the Manchester Academy, with Skindred in support), lead singer Eugene Hütz sang the most famous song from the album, ‘Start Wearing Purple’, entirely in Spanish, just to mix things up, make it different, and probably to annoy the audience a little bit too.
This album is probably the classic of the Gypsy Punk scene. It’s a distillation of all that made the style fun, new and exciting, and it is still an excellent choice to play loud and mosh around till your head hurts.
No comments:
Post a Comment