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Gogol Bordello: the gypsy-punk band

Do you feel that indie music is now too mainstream? Does rap make you want to kill yourself? Well, if you want a new tune for your life, then look no further than Gogol Bordello.

No one could accuse this gypsy punk band of being too mainstream. With excessively colourful videos that look like the best acid trip of your life and such lyrics as, “Caravans are leaving, and her breast is heaving,” the band mixes traditional gypsy folk tunes with punk and dub and enough bohemian spirit to make the Moulin Rouge jealous.

Whilst having started in New York, the endless list of band members come from a shit ton of different places across the globe and you can really hear it in their sound, not least of which through the accent of their lead singer which really brings in that Ukrainian folk vibe you’ve always been pining for. If you’re a language whiz, it also seems that they have made an album entirely in Russian, though given my lack of ability to read Cyrillic, it really could be any language; key point, get on that multi-lingual, multi-cultural hype (oh so PC).

Rolling Stone named them “the World’s most riotous live band” and they aren’t particularly tame in any other format; profane, though witty titles are to be expected – ‘Think Locally, Fuck Globally’. In their artist’s statement, They claim that they plan to achieve their aims (God knows what they are) through “acts of music, theatre, chaos and sorcery”. If that’s not worth a listen, I don’t know what is.

Roommate reactions: “It sounds like the kind of thing they beat animals to death to”; “Music induced headache”; “I quite like it, I don’t really have anything interesting to say about it”; “Pretty jazzy, he’s got some bold looks”; “It’s easy to sing along to cos they don’t sound like real words”; “This is why Russia wants to annex Ukraine” (no idea if this was meant as a positive or negative).

Entirely upbeat, you get hit in the face with music and peculiar lyrics, “start wearing purple” repeated god knows how many times being a particular favourite, and really can’t help but enjoy it, though anyone prejudiced against accordions: this isn’t the band for you. In short, they’re crazy and well worth the listen. Also, their frontman has an out-of-this-world moustache.

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