Review: Gogol Bordello spun a frenetic punk melee in Tempe

About halfway through the set, Eugene Hütz cracked a tallboy Modelo and announced to the crowd that he was taking a 15-second break. It was a packed house Monday night at the Marquee in Tempe, and he wasn’t the only one who could use a breather. He and the six other musicians in Gogol Bordello, Hütz’s incandescent — perhaps immortal? — Gypsy punk band, had for the past hour careened through every track with finale-level intensity. And the hundreds of punks (and apparently a couple of Phoenix children’s choirs, he later said?) who had turned out to dance and sway and mosh on the sloping floor of the no-frills cave of a venue also appreciated the pause.

 “You’re officially doing pretty fucking good,” Hütz said. Fans laughed and cheered for themselves. “Meaning that your ratio of digesting and digging new songs — is pretty fucking high!” Gogol Bordello is touring on a solid new album, their 10th, “We Mean It, Man!,” which has been out only for about three months, and while the crowd had found it easier to shout and bounce along with “Not a Crime” and “My Companjera,” we apparently hadn’t done too badly keeping up with the recent releases: “Ignition,” “From Boyarka to Boyaca” and “State of Shock.” This beer break was Hütz’s way of announcing that we had more new shit to get through.

“I don’t want you to fuck it up and be kinda lost, like, ‘I don’t really know this song,’” he said. “I want you to be like, ‘I know it. I know it! It’s in my motherfucking DNA!’ So that’s what the 15 seconds is for. To acknowledge this song being in your DNA already.”

He then launched into “Mystics,” another new track, and one which hit on a theme of the night, which is that you either jump into the fray or get out of the way. “’Cause in the end we are all / only small-time mystics,” the hook goes. “I’ll see you on the other side / For now I am done wasting my lifetime / talking you out, talk you out of your suicide.”

Hütz is a Ukrainian national who has made New York City home; he knows how to persevere through tough times. His approach is to gather a bunch of your best friends from around Latin America and Brooklyn and go on the road to play aggressive, violin-and-accordion-forward dance rock. He points to a spot on the floor and announces “mosh pit!” and a mosh pit appears — maybe three dozen people swirling in a counterclockwise fashion, careening into backs and elbows and chests and butts, huffing and stomping but keeping everyone safe. Shirts came off. The one dude at every show who moshes against the grain was willing himself to keep going clockwise. One beefy dude was wearing an apron, crashing into people. Another guy brought a puppet: a fuzzy duck wearing striped pants who lip-synched to the set. Three people, by my count, crowd-surfed to the front of the stage and were helped over the barrier at the front; only one of them had her top completely fail at the rail, spilling boobs as the guitarist looked on, giggling. A man and woman standing in the eye of the mosh pit waltzed for an entire song, untouched.

It was a rainy night; people came in damp and then drenched themselves with sweat; the front of the pit smelled like a locker room hamper. Meanwhile Hütz kept screaming party music so good I’m frankly stunned that it’s in English. After two hours of this delirium, Hütz was bedraggled, shirtless, sweat-smeared. The band finally closed with “Undestructable” and then Hütz stuck around to pose for photos. I found a pen on the floor and realized it had fallen out of my pocket. The guy with the duck puppet picked up a small blue foam ball from a pile of crushed cups and flattened cans. A large, no-brand black sneaker was also on the floor. I moved it to a more visible spot and after a couple of minutes saw a dude carrying its match wander up and claim it, clearly relieved. As I walked outside, I saw duck-puppet guy wearing the foam ball. It had been a clown nose all along.