Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta!
It's alive! Alive! Alive!
In a way, it's a little unfair to simply listen to Gogol Bordello. If any current group cries out to be seen as well as heard, it's this New York gypsy-punk troupe, whose rambunctious live show is one of the most entertaining around: crazed acrobatics, lopsided dancing, nonstop action top to bottom. So the good news is that Super Taranta!, the octet's fourth album (not counting collaborations and EPs), is damn near as unrelenting as its concerts. Yet it isn't exhausting: frontman and lead conceptualist Eugene Hutz knows how to pace as well as to pile it on, so that the string arrangements atop gypsy violin of "Dub the Frequencies of Love" works climactically, mid-song, between cool-out passages that live up to the song's title. And as he has in his earlier work, Hutz's lyrics sting and wink at the same time: "There were never any good old days/They are today, they are tomorrow/It's a stupid thing we say/Cursing tomorrow as sorrow," he declares near the beginning of Taranta!'s leadoff cut, "Ultimate," and on the album's peak, "Your Country," he sings "Your country raised you/Your country fed you/And just like any other country it will break you… it will fuck you, up you." So will this album, in the best possible way.
