Gogol Bordello : SUPER TARANTA!

♣♣♣Ω (3.5/5)

The first song on Gogol Bordello’s Supter Taranta, “Ultimate” sort of grabs you by the neck, shakes you for a couple minutes, spits in your face, kicks you in the balls, then maims you, all the while telling you about all the things in the world that you once thought were wrong, and then it walks away, and you’re perfectly fine with all this.

Robert Christgau reviewed this album for Rolling Stone last issue and loaded it with a bunch of over analytical garbage about immigration and all that. He also reviewed the White Stripe’s Icky Thump, piling anti-Stripes bias into his words, and Against Me!’s New Wave, insulting it, then giving it four stars. He’s really a bad writer. I had to get that out of my system.

Anyhow, the rest of the album does more or less the same thing, just with less force. “Wonderlust King” Is an example of a song that just isn’t as awesome as Ultimate.
“Zina Marina” is a strung out, distortion-riffed, psychadellic track, “Supertheory of Supereverything” is an anti-religion anthem, “Tribal Connection” is a quiet but epic song about being at home and comfortable with it, “Force of Victory” is hard rocking and loving it, and “Harem in Tuscany (Taranta)” Is an awesome singalong. But Super Taranta is not all that Christgau makes it up to be. Itís a very good album, but it’s by no means four-star worthy. Some of the songs sound the same, and some are just too weird to stand (“SuddenlyÖ (I Miss Carpaty)”, “Strange Uncles from Abroad”).
Suck it, Christgau.

Key Tracks: Ultimate, Your Country, and American Wedding

Gogol Bordello : Troubled Friends
Gogol Bordello : The Last Wish of the Bride
Gogol Bordello : God of Sameness 1

Reviewed by Evan Greenwald