It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello is angry, he makes his best music. See; 2022’s ‘Solidaritine’, released the same year as Hutt’s homeland of Ukraine was invaded by Russia, which saw Gogol Bordello wrestling with loss and rage. Four years later, and they’re channelling their exile status into a message of hope and self-discovery. Living well can be the best resistance, and the overwhelming sense of thriving amid adversity that blasts from ‘We Mean It, Man!’ like a punk rock strike force makes this the band’s best album in a decade.
Hutz once sang that on his headphones was Bob Marley and Joe Strummer, and it’s the latter whose spirit drives this record. It’s not the Joe who partied in the Hammersmith Palais though, but the solo artist who led his roving band of Mescaleros through prairies of diverse influences and social commentary. Gogol Bordello have drawn on so, so much from their musical heritage to make this album, passing beyond the gypsy-punk label and through to glorious self-definition. We’ve got the gorgeous Madness energy of ‘Hater Liquidator’, an organ-propelled free-wheeling machine of a track, but then we’re presented with the almost post-punk ‘Mystics’, all open synth and jagged guitars without compromising on their trademark scrappy style. Neither of these influences would have worked for the one-dimensional Gogol Bordello of fifteen years ago but now? They’re challenging their own genre labels to expand their comfort zone to include pretty much the entire world.
Returning to their full-on riotous roots but in a fuller form is what makes ‘We Mean It, Man!’ so spectacular. The deceptively simple chorus of ‘Crayons’ bobs above waves of complex energy, and their collaboration with Puzzled Panther, ‘From Boyarka to Boyaca’ is five minutes of sheer fervour, with a title spat like a slogan across the kind of extended folk-punk rollercoaster that we haven’t heard on a studio record since their early days. On tape, Gogol Bordello never seemed to capture the fury of their live shows until now, leaving their stage presence up to our imagination. Now, they seem to have brought the spirit that erupts live with them onto their records.
There’s a few moments of contemplation and respite, and it wouldn’t be a Gogol Bordello record without Hutz cracking out his acoustic guitar around an imaginary campfire. This time it’s ‘Boiling Point’, a track that breathes hope for the future if we use keep on fighting the good fight. Even though ‘State of Shock’ ramps up the BPM as a brass-heavy closer, it bounces into a stirring message of resistance. “Darkness is fragile, just the the light,” Hutz muses, and he’s sure of his own victory against the forces of oppression.
“We exist in a mystical realm and nobody knows how it works,” the frontman intones as the first words we hear on ‘We Mean It, Man!’, and that truly has to be the best summary of where Gogol Bordello are at in 2026. They’re in their own chaotic world that blends everything from eighties pop to Manu Chao to rabble-rousing street punk, and they’ve never sounded better.
KATE ALLVEY