Maggie Vaughn/ Shepherd Express
The hardest working gypsy punks in the business, Gogol Bordello brought an energetic show (but really, when don’t they?) to Summerfest Tuesday night. Eugene Hütz walked onto stage strumming his guitar, playing “Illumination,” and was soon joined by the rest of the band, who rocked through “Ultimate,” and “Not a Crime,” before taking a moment to breathe.
A highlight for the first half of the show was “My Companjera,” filled with Hütz running the span of the stage. Meanwhile, fiddle grandmaster Sergey Ryabstev and Pasha Newmar, who proved an accordion solo can be badass, did some grandstanding on platforms by the floor monitors to pump the crowded BMO Harris Pavilion. After ripping through an intense solo, guitarist Boris Pelekh dropped the mic by throwing his guitar into the air and letting it land onstage. Although the band’s stage presence, they felt a like they were missing a little something without Hütz’s former back-up singers and dancers. Pedro Erazo, percussionist and vocalist, complemented Hütz’s singing and antics well.
Other great moments: “Mishto!” (from the album that first brought the band wide popularity, 2005’s Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike), and a couple of songs off the band’s most recent album, 2013’s Pura Vida Conspiracy, “The Other Side of Rainbow,” and “Dig Deep Enough.”
The band played their most well-known song, “Start Wearing Purple,” toward the end of their set, and predictably, the crowd sprung into a frenzy. This was the biggest moment that highlighted that the band was misplaced at the BMO Harris Pavilion—a frenzied crowd pogoing and waving their hands in their assigned seating, while security quickly worked to clear people dancing in the aisles. Some bands just aren’t assigned seats type of music, and Gogol Bordello’s “world punk” is one of them. They’re a great band to see at a summer festival, but you need plenty of dance floor.
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Not that the audience was at all disappointed. Demand for an encore brought the band onstage for three more songs after their hour long set, “Wanderlust King,” (which caused another round of frenzied dancing), “Think Locally” and “Darling,” before the gypsy caravan moved on.
