ACL Fest: Gogol Bordello Converts Crowd to Gypsies

For anyone just arriving to ACL halfway through the day in time to catch the opening of Gogol Bordello’s set, there are much worse ways to start off your weekend. The Gypsy punk group fronted by the always-animated Eugene Hutz has a knack for creating colorful and spirited live shows and inciting most everyone within earshot to dance. The clan, all clad in urban art Gypsy clothes that were anything but uniform, high-stepped and danced around the stage as they played music bursting off in every direction but was anything but disorganized or messy. From the chirp and wail of the fiddle to wild percussion, everything sounded precise and almost effortless. Newer songs like “Wonderlust King” from last year’s Super Taranta! had listeners locked in arms, dancing in circles yelling “Hey! Hey!” as the stage lit up with fiddle, accordion, a heaving rhythm section and Hutz’s furiously strummed acoustic guitar. Backup dancers kept the energy up and added fullness and spectacle with some additional marching band percussion. By the time “Start Wearing Purple” started up, Hutz was holding a mic in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. As he flung himself and the wine about, the crowd ingested all of it and answered back with some pretty bold dancing of their own.