GOGOL BORDELLO - Gipsy Punks Underdog World Strike

In spite of the old-school teacher who, back in elementary school, used to stir up fears and prejudices by handing out little evening prayers so that the grey, frozen, stoically and politically scowling monster of the Soviet Union wouldn't come and eat Italian children, according to some incomplete and apocalyptic iconography - in spite of those small childhood traumas - there's "Gipsy Punks Underdog World Strike", by the collective Gogol Bordello. The drunken acrobat Eugene Hutz, fleeing the Chernobyl disaster after a wandering worthy of the finest nomadism, lands in New York. The stopover brings about unexpected developments: the Russian meets other artists in exile from Eastern Europe, finally free to express their ambitions without any restraint; out of pure chance the Gogol Bordello project is born, its name capturing a surreal spirit on one hand (a nod to the Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol) and a kind of underlying rowdy humor on the other (the reference to a house of pleasure).

Gogol Bordello is colour/heat, circus/carousel, ethno-punk, apparently an unlikely mix of kitsch trinkets and vodka benders, torn rags and furious screams, but in reality a thoroughly respectable ensemble, able to balance its ingredients skilfully and make everything fun, irreverent, and free of déjà vu. "Gipsy Punks Underdog World Strike", their third album, boosted by Hutz's cinematic foray alongside Elijah Wood in "Everything Is Illuminated" (based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer) and recorded on analogue tape at Steve Albini's studio, tells small stories of rebellious immigrants catapulted into metropolitan reality.

The energy is huge, the dancing becomes instinctive, the meltin' pot astonishes. In the first half of the 15 tracks, we move from Balkan openings sung with fury ("Sally") and atmospheres softened by rock touches ("Not A Crime"), to bass-injected anthem/manifesto choruses ("Immigrant Punk") and acid episodes crafted like a hopped-up Goran Bregovic ("Dogs Were Barking").

In the second half it evokes the spirit of homegrown Vinicio Capossela at his most ironic ("Start Wearing Purple"), no-global provocations ("Think Locally, Fuck Globally") and Clash-like eruptions on the title track (a bizarre ethno-punk orchestra at an Anglo/Roma wedding), tavern curses recalling their time in Italy ("Santa Marinella") and closing violin games that soften the accelerated rhythm, making it romantic to declaim like a bohemienne.

Eugene Hutz, with his Gogol Bordello, slips effortlessly into the folds of world music, while still maintaining, with dignity, an utterly sui generis status, thanks to atypical contaminations and forays into punk tradition; but above all he defuses certain clichés that have by now become stale simulacra of no-global culture, freeing it from rigid golden rules, ironically revised and corrected, with results that are frankly anarchic and pleasure-seeking - one for all: "Think locally, fuck globally", devoid of any populist ambition.

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30/04/2026