Gogol Bordello Learns to Love the Synth Again on ‘We Mean It, Man!’

Gogol Bordello makes music that is best experienced with a crowd. The band’s frenetic, Eastern European-flavored brand of punk is tailor-made for the mosh pit. Ever since breaking out with their Steve Albini-produced 2005 album Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike, the Eugene Hütz-fronted collective has played bigger rooms to larger crowds around the world. However, as Gogol Bordello has shuffled lineups (Hütz and violinist Sergey Ryabtsev the only constants) and reached for a broader sound, the band became better known for their concerts than the multiple albums that followed Gypsy Punks.

In a time of world strife, we need protest music, and on their new record, We Mean It, Man! Hütz recaptures some of the righteous anger that made Gypsy Punks so revelatory 20 years ago. Ukraine-born Hütz has plenty to be angry about and tracks with titles such as “No Time for Idiots” pretty much sum up where he’s at these days. Featuring producers Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Gang of Four, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Amyl & The Sniffers, Idles) and Adam “Atom” Greenspan (Amyl & The Sniffers, Idles), We Mean It, Man! is Gogol Bordello’s most vital and engaging record since Gypsy Punks.

The title track kicks off the record with a clatter of noise. “Brothers are played against one another / While sisters continue to bleed,” Hütz shouts, a dark worldview if there ever was one. But Gogol Bordello has more modes than anger. It’s easy to imagine “Life is Possible Again” as a crowd-pleasing singalong while “Boiling Point” sounds like a folk ballad, despite its incendiary title.

The synth, which played a heavy part on Gypsy Punks, also makes a prominent return on We Mean It, Man! “Hater Liquidator” could almost pass as a disco track with its irresistible organ-led melody, while “Mystics” could be a lesser version of the band’s 2005 song  “I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again.” Final track “Solidarity” mirrors penultimate Gypsy Punks track “Undestructable” in its spirit of cohesion, but this time Hütz has a bigger target and he brought in help. Along with New Wave god Bernard Sumner, Hütz reinterprets the Angelic Upstarts’ 1983 pro-Polish freedom track into an elegy for Ukraine. “We are with you in our hearts and in our minds / And we’ll pray for a nation through its darkest times,” Hütz sings as the track builds from hushed acoustic guitar to an all-out New Order-style dance track. In a world bereft of protest songs, Eugene Hütz and Gogol Bordello have answered that call.