Do you ever find yourself thinking
from time to time about some old friend you used to spend a lot of time with
many years ago, but lost touch with and hardly see any more?
Trust me, this happens more and more the older you get. You’re always thinking of this person and how
you should give them a call and say hello but you never quite do and then – out
of the blue – you find out that they died a month ago and you didn’t even
know. Well that just happened to me.
Ferris Bueller famously said “life
moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and
look around once in a while you could miss it.”
Well it’s true, and it’s not always funny.
Since regret would be wasted, and it
is well past time for grand gestures, I’ll have to settle for a small and
obscure one and simply say, “Go 49ers.”
Disc 482 is…Trans-Continental Hustle
Year of Release: 2010
What’s up with the Cover? Front-man and Gogol Bordello mastermind Eugene Hutz
leans against a post. Considering how
poorly dressed, ungroomed and generally unkempt he looks, he’s got a
surprisingly sexy vibe. My wife thinks
he’s quite a dish, in what I would characterize as a “You’re very forward and
I’m drunk enough to like it” kind of way and I can totally see her point.
How I Came To Know It: Introduced to me via a very generous birthday gift
of this album and two others from our friends Sherylyn and Joel. The first two were Canadian acts Mother
Mother (through their album “O My Heart” reviewed back at Disc 167) and
the second was Dan Mangan (through his “Nice Nice, Very Nice” album, still
un-reviewed). I’ve liked every artist
enough to buy more of their work, which is a pretty nice average, but Gogol
Bordello has been the best of all.
How It Stacks Up: I have two Gogol Bordello albums; this one and an
earlier effort from 2005 called “Gypsy Punks:
Underdog World Strike.” Of the
two, “Trans-Continental Hustle” is my clear favourite.
Rating: 4 stars
I could’ve
reviewed this album last night but damn it, I needed the energy of Gogol
Bordello’s gypsy punk for one more day.
Gypsy
punk is a hard thing to wrap your head around on its own, but it helps to
imagine if the Pogues were Roma from the Ukraine, instead of Irishmen in London:
different local folk music of course but the same global appeal of
revolutionary punk music.
The
energy that Gogol Bordello delivers is exceptional, and the band is well known
for its crazy stage presence. Do
yourself a favour and Youtube some of their live performances and see for
yourself. The challenge is to take that
incredible energy from a live show and capture it in studio recordings; no easy
task.
Enter producer-mastermind
Rick Rubin, who keeps the cuts clean (rather than the sloppy stylings that
regular punk sometimes slips into) while losing none of the visceral energy Gogol
Bordello is famous for.
The music
of the album finds its foundation in eastern European gypsy music. They play it so well it makes me want to go
out and find some of the traditional stuff, which has so many connections with
the Celtic music of the British Isles that I love. (Loreena McKennitt has been
exploring these links for years, by the way).
Gogol Bordello employ energetic guitar and violin, accordion and
boisterous singing in unison (harmonies would just seem fake on these songs).
Infused
into this are rock and punk elements that energize the whole thing and update
it to a twenty-first century sound (with Rubin’s guiding hand, of course). On my earlier album, “Gypsy Punks,” Gogol
Bordello had all the ingredients as well, but on “Trans-Continental Hustle”
they are so much tighter and faster.
While “Trans-Continental
Hustle” is mostly about energy, the lyrics are surprisingly thoughtful, dealing
with the frustration of immigration into the first world like these lines from “Immigraniada (We Comin’ Rougher)”:
“Frozen eyes, sweaty back
My family’s sleeping on a
railroad track
All my life I pack/unpack
But man I got to earn this buck
I gotta pay representation
To be accepted in a nation
Where after efforts of a hero
Welcome – start again from zero.”
Other songs
have references as disparate as Charlie Chaplin and Kafka, and use them
appropriately (which is particularly rare when it comes to Kafka). On “Uma
Menina” he glumly observes “As if them
birds are free/From the sidewalks of the sky.” Combined with the power of the music, you are
left with the sense that Hutz is a very insightful and intelligent guy, but
that he won’t let that fact blunt genuine anger when he feels it is warranted.
Musically
the album is pretty straight forward with basic riffs and chords, but just
enough brilliant picking to demonstrate these guys know what they are doing,
and can switch gears whenever they like.
The songs
also tend to have a natural build in them.
“Immigraniada” starts with a
groovy bass riff, and slowly builds in intensity and tempo. This is even more noticeable on the brilliant
“When Universes Collide” which starts
with just a guitar gently strumming and (I think) an accordion, the song slowly
builds into its terrible vision of civil strife reinforced with unison singing,
drums and a healthy dollop of volume. While
the song is dark and menacing in subject, Gogol Bordello always manages to infuse
their punk fatalism with a triumphant overtone.
It doesn’t detract from the heavy subjects, but it gives you hope that
the human spirit can rise above despite the steepest of odds.
In fact,
there is very little bad to say about this great record, and it comes close to
five stars. There aren’t any bad tracks,
and there are more than a few exceptional ones but while it fills me with an
enthusiasm for life, it falls just short of perfection. Hey, I’m a hard marker, so even though it
comes in at four stars only, don’t be bashful in going out and getting this
record. You won’t be disappointed.
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