Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 09/07/07
Label: Side One Dummy

Make what you will of Gogol Bordello's last-minute decision to pull out of T In The Park in order to accompany Madonna at Live Earth. Given that they had an album out the following Monday, it was evidently a promotional opportunity too perfect to miss. But does it, as disgruntled fans in chat forums suggest, call into question everything from their commitment to their fans to their 'rebel' image? Or are we being cynical? Perhaps the celebrated New York gypsy punks are actually just very keen to heal the planet.

Certainly, this characteristically-anarchic new album of Borat via The Pogues Romany folk/klezmer/dub/punk fusion makes no bones about its lofty intentions. The title "Super Taranta" derives, we learn, from 'Tarantella', an Italian form of extreme traditional music that was invented to cure women with hysteria - and its contents are described as "conquer the world music". Its manifesto could be boiled down into: stop flapping, become an impudent globetrotting gypsy, and everything will be OK. Its targets are legion.

In "Supertheory Of Supereverything" they attack - via frontman Eugene Hutz's strong Ukrainian accent and endearing linguistic bloopers - Christianity: "First time I had read the Bible / It had stroke me as unwitty". Chilean dictator Pinochet is on the receiving end of a threat in "Forces Of Victory", while the tame Western attitude to celebrations is mocked in "American Wedding": "Have you ever been to an American wedding / Where is the vodka, where's marinated herring?" "Alcohol" celebrates the demon booze ("I'm sorry some of us given you a bad name"), "My Strange Uncles From Abroad" glorify exile and escape, and wild originality is hailed both explicitly and implicitly - in every drum beat, accordion screech, lead guitar lick and wail of fiddle.

It remains, nonetheless, impossible to take the band who nearly called themselves Kafka Whorehouse seriously. Rather than, say, the reverent approach of A Hawk And A Hacksaw who synthesize similar Emir Kusturica cinematic sounds with an outsider's respect, Gogol Bordello chuck influences into their mix - and with members drawn from Israel, Scotland and Mexico as well as Eastern Europe, there are plenty - with the wild abandon of one sloshing spirits into a punch bowl. They are very self-aware, very funny and very naughty. If you were their school teacher, you'd sit them all at different tables.

Ultimately, that's what makes it impossible to criticise Gogol Bordello for being Madonna's poodles. "Super Taranta!" is an album of such sweaty vigour, spittle-flecked passion, wide-eyed curiosity and a keen sense of the ridiculous it deserves a big fat plug on primetime telly. A better world through piss-taking - there have been worse ideas.

    by Anna Britten