The City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection has grown accustomed to NYC gypsy punks Gogol Bordello (and their Casa Gogol labelmates) bringing their annual year-end holiday shows to our own Brooklyn Bowl. So, we were a bit bummed that the closest their 2025 holiday jaunt came to the 215 was Archer Music Hall in Allentown… However, next Tuesday, March 24th, the band will be returning to Union Transfer for the first time since 2017… with a new album in tow, nonetheless… February 13th saw the release of We Mean It, Man!, the band’s ninth studio album and possibly 2026’s best full-length yet, which dropped via Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hütz’s Casa Gogol Records. A week after the album’s drop and the afternoon after opening night of the We Mean It, Man! North American tour I got a chance to catch up with Eugene and Victoria Espinoza of Puzzled Panther (who is providing support on all of the dates, along with former Gogol Bordello guitarist Boris Pelekh, whose Boris and the Joy is opening the shows) who tell me about their latest music, the current live show, and everything else that’s been going on with Casa Gogol Records.
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Izzy Cihak: The last time we chatted was a little more than a year ago for Puzzled Panther, prior to your 2024 holiday dates, and a little more than two years ago for Gogol Bordello, prior to your 2023 holiday dates. What’s been going on at Casa Gogol Records? Obviously you’ve each dropped new releases in the past year.
Eugene Hütz: Our history is young, short, a conceptual project to ensure the continuity of the fine New York tradition of music that we love. It was started with The Velvet Underground and continued on with Television and Sonic Youth, and later on Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol and Gogol Bordello, all these diverse streaks of essentially what can be called post-punk, or proto-pre-post-punk [laughs]. It’s all semantics; you can just throw them all out a window [laughs].
It was inspired by naturally occurring awesomeness, where there was a cluster of new bands that were kind of doing it already, so we just brought it into laser focus. We started with Puzzled Panther and Grace Bergere, and over the past year we’ve added Pons, an electronic kind of no wave project. Mary Shelley is another band. We’re looking at signing another band; I’m not gonna tell who yet [laughs]. What I really like about it is all of the people I just named love hanging out and going to see each other and spreading the common gospel. So, I’ve been really enjoying this process.
Izzy: We Mean It, Man! dropped a week ago. Have you had any favorite reactions to the new music?
Eugene: What I’ve seen is a rare occurrence where new songs quickly become highlights of the shows, so you know you’re stepping into a new era. “We Mean It, Man!” is 1000% percent the highlight of the show. It kind of tops “Start Wearing Purple” and “Wonderlust King” and all those well-toured numbers that send everybody buckwild, which is amazing to see. “Ignition,” another single from the record, we’ve been opening with that song, because it does feel like a new era.
Similar with Puzzled Panther. I’m in two bands now [laughs]. We have two EPs out and we’re working on an album, but the song that’s kind of the centerpiece of the new album has already become the most intense part of the show.
Victoria Espinoza: It’s a song called “Gravity,” well… “End of Gravity,” “Oh Gravity The…” we’ll see which one sticks in the end [laughs]. We’ll be playing it in Philly! It’s beautiful, almost symphonic, in a way, beautiful swells, an intensity that I feel like really lends itself to that post-punk, post-post-post-neo-post-punk era, and I feel like people are really interested in new arrangements and instrumentation.
And I just wanna say about We Mean It, Man! — as somebody who, after my set, I’ll go out and play with Gogol and then see them — people are really into the synth that they’ve implemented, especially on their new album. What’s really great is that they’ve embraced it with open arms. And then you realize that (and we learned recently) there’s a couple programmed tracks in Gypsy Punks, so it’s almost like they brought it back to the surface and made it more obvious. I feel like the crowd is really digging that.
Eugene: Especially at last night’s show in Montreal, which is a home of techno. I mean, techno went from Detroit to Montreal and then it went to Berlin, if you wanna follow the chronology of that movement. So, they know and love their techno… techno was the new punk at one point…
Victoria: To that point of bringing things from the past up to the more obvious light, I’ve played the viola since I was 10 years old, and after college kind of let it collect dust, and in “Oh Gravity” I finally pick it back up. This is the first song and the only song on our upcoming album that’s gonna have it, and everyone’s embraced it so well in the context of Puzzled Panther. I love this idea that both of these projects are bringing light to things that have always been there, and they’re getting their time in the sun this time.
Izzy: You mentioned Puzzled Panther’s working on a full-length, which is going to include this, so I have to ask if you have any idea of a possible release date?
Victoria: We’re thinking about this fall. Grace Bergere, my great friend and also great artist, just started recording her amazing new record with Dennis Herring in LA. The Casa Gogol thing is about community, so we’re hoping to drop it around the same time and maybe even go on tour with each other.
Izzy: I know that you’ve said this album was conceptualized as a collaboration with Nick Launay. How was it doing a full-length with him? He’s done so many amazing records. I know Adam Greenspan also worked on the record, who also has an amazing catalogue and has done a lot of cool things with Nick, as well.
Eugene: We had a fucking blast in the studio, just the way we had a blast when we first met, which was probably about 15 years ago at the party. By that time I was pretty much a fan of everything he’s ever done, starting with PiL and Gang of Four and Killing Joke and Midnight Oil and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Refused and so on, and more recently IDLES and Amyl and the Sniffers. Just from a couple of those names, you see the logic behind the discography. It’s a very particular streak of post-punk groove that Nick distilled and interconnected these bands, which is a testament to his great artistic taste and, at the same time, the very rowdy and energetic feeling of the music.
I thought that we’d wanna do this record with him not only because our drinking went so well together [laughs], but because I feel like Gogol Bordello was always such an ambitious project. I am afraid that because of that ambitiousness we possibly omitted or unwittingly cut ties with some very prominent music camps. Truth be told, we come from not only punk and post-hardcore, but we also grew up listening to The Cure and The Smiths, like fuckin’ everybody else [laughs]. That’s why I kind of called the album “post-punk revenge,” to kind of remanifest the origins. If you want to trace it back down, there was an era that I got into punk rock and listened to all the good shit that comes with the territory, but I would have probably never started playing music if it wasn’t for Joy Division and The Cure. Those are fundamental things where people pick up instruments and, on very minimal means, get very far. That is a very particular form of music. And we were always part of that camp. It’s part of our upbringing.
Izzy: You dropped an official video for “Life Is Possible Again” the day that the album dropped, which sort of makes it the latest single, and I know you’ve been playing it live, so I’m curious how that particular track came about.
Eugene: It’s a track that comes from a devastating place. As you know, I’m from the Ukraine, so being in very close touch with my family and my friends, they are going through this fucking madness and people around the world seem to be moving on with their lives and desensitized to the topic. But do not get desensitized! They really do appreciate any outside support, moral support being one of the chief supports.
I felt like continuing to contribute to that moral support in a way that’s very focused and tangible is an important thing to do. Chiefly from remembering my grandparents, who all went to World War II and often described to me the fucking insane atrocity of it all and how after the war yet another chapter of incredible hardship begins, where just when you think you have nothing to give and nothing to pull out any kind of strength from, that’s when fucking other crazy-ass shit starts, where now you need to rebuild what was destroyed. The song comes from that place of us humans. We do have the ability to rebuild. As long as you’re alive, it’s there. It’s to support that idea of perseverance and survival against all odds.
Izzy: You just kicked off the We Mean It, Man! Tour last night in Montreal! How was opening night? Any highlights of the first show?
Eugene: It felt like the beginning of a new era, seriously.
Victoria: Yeah, I mean you started out the tour with a new song. “Sacred Darling,” was the opener for a long time, and then to hear “Ignition” was so cool.
Eugene: Yeah, we started off with “Ignition,” “Life Is Possible Again,” with all the new tracks, which is a very bold move. But before I moved to New York in the ‘90s, I spent six years in Vermont, and I often went to Montreal. It was my go-to place to see music. We went to see everybody from Jon Spencer to Beck to Nirvana, Fugazi, Ministry, on and on and on and on. We saw it all in Montreal. And knowing how well tuned Montreal is to all forms of alternative music — industrial, electronic, hardcore — kind of gave us perfect license to go straight with the new material, because it’s kind of custom made for Montreal [laughs]. It is the land of all of that, so it was a very powerful show. It sent us off on a powerful, sold-out kick off! It was great for Puzzled Panther, too!
Izzy: And, in addition to Gogol Bordello and Puzzled Panther, I know opening these shows is Boris from Gogol Bordello with his Boris and the Joy project.
Eugene: Boris is our beloved guitarist of eight years, prior to Leo Mintek. He left Gogol Bordello specifically to focus on his solo stuff. Korey, our drummer, is drumming with Boris for this project. It’s interesting saying that Leo Mintek is our new guitar player, because Leo and I go 20 years back. I produced his first band, Outer National, back in 2003/2004. So, he’s like new, but he’s always been a part of the family, and I’ve always been in the vicinity of him and knew that we were gonna play together. So, as you can see, it’s a deeply incestuous situation here [laughs].
Izzy: Finally, what’s next for all of you, whether related to the individual bands or just Casa Gogol Records in general?
Eugene: Growth of our familia! It’s hard to compartmentalize. I feel like Casa Gogol’s a snowball that’s evolving quite rapidly, with Pons coming aboard and new artists, it expands the snowball with a newness that we very much welcome. Fall is when we’re gonna drop new Puzzled Panther, Grace Bergere, and Pons records. Right now we’re hustling up some roadwork… We’re gonna get off the tour, go back to the studio, and finish it all up.
Another thing we’re pretty focused on is our ongoing Casa Gogol Parties. For the last one we paired up with SPIN magazine… That was Casa Gogol Party #4. It’s probably once in three months we’ve been able to do this. Those shindigs, I don’t wanna use the fucking word “showcase,” because it sounds like an industry thing… It features all of our artists and it’s something we really look forward to. We do short sets, 20 minutes/25 minutes, boom, boom, boom, like The Beatles and Hendrix used to do it, just fucking go and do triple espresso of your best material and everybody has a blast and keeps up with everybody’s latest developments. It’s a really fucking cool, enjoyable thing we’ve been doing.
Victoria: I’m really excited for this year. Like you said, it’s kind of a snowball effect, but I think that people are realizing Casa Gogol are bringing artists that are doing something unique, like with Pons and Grace and all these other artists… I’m excited for people to know that when they go to listen to the Casa Gogol artists, they’re gonna hear something that maybe some people, at first, might not get it…
Eugene: They will get it [laughs]. It’s undeniable [laughs].
Victoria: I just appreciate that we’re all trying to break into new territories in music, which is hard to do now because music has existed for so long. But I feel like we are achieving that and I’m just excited for people to hear more about it and hear what we’re doing… I feel like we’re trailblazing here…
Eugene: I mean, if somebody hears Grace Bergere and they don’t get it, they have to stop listening to music altogether; they have to hang it up [laughs]; there’s no hope [laughs]. I think that the pronounced singularity of the artists is a prerequisite of what we’re doing, but at the same time, instead of having some kind of sound in common, it’s more about having an aesthetic in common; it’s not uniform. This is strong, trailblazing, and singular. Those are the artists we naturally have an affinity with, and it’s pretty much self-evident from the kind of people who supported Casa Gogol initially: Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Brian Chase has been an amazing part of it, Steve Shelley and Thurston Moore, who also just wrote an introduction to my book… That’s coming out in October.
Victoria: It’s all coming out together!
*Get your tickets here.
**Listen for a Gogol Bordello classic on March edition of Philthy Radio, this Friday (March 20th) from 9-11pm ET on Y-Not Radio.
