GOGOL BORDELLO

When I first heard the music of Gogol Bordello, a couple of years ago, I made myself a promise. "Carel," I said, "If this band comes within 100 miles of you, I'm gonna take you to see them". Well, tonight's the big night, and the drive to Park City is a mere dozen miles. Their most recent cd is titled Gypsy Punks, and that's a fairly apt description of their music. Fronted by the crazed and charismatic Ukrainian emigré Eugene Hütz, the band's catchy minor-key melodies often evoke the Hot Club of Paris, while their furious rhythm section adds a post-punk aggression to the mix. Hütz plays rhythm guitar and sings...well, you can't really call it singing, but whatever it is, it's absolutely compelling. His lyrics (in English, often slipping into Ukrainian, Spanish, Italian, or languages known only to the ancients) are at once engaging, literate, amusing, and totally incomprehensible. Of equal importance is the versatile violin of Sergey Ryabtzev. At one moment he'll play in the sweet, lilting style of Stéphane Grapelli, the next in a gritty, scraping manner suitable for a Romani campfire, then suddenly shift into a more mainstream tone that Borodin or Khatchaturian might demand.
I don't expect to get a lot of sitting down accomplished tonight.