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BREAKING NEWS: THE GYPSIES HAVE TAKEN OVER BROOKLYN!


Posted by Hartley On Feb 5, 2009

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I like her sword

So this is the sound of new Brooklyn. I don't know what's in the PBC vinyl-siding that lines the townhouses of Greenpoint and Williamsburg and Red Hook et al, but it's certainly making all the men grow massive beards like me 5 years ago, and start bands playing gypsy folk music. Did the greatness of Neutral Milk Hotel inadvertently do this to us on some subconscious level!? I mean, Airplane..is certainly a "seminal" record filled with swooning vocals, glockenspiel, and enough accordion to soundtrack a French Film Festival - but it was also an album that had fuzzy-as-hell proto-punk leanings to counterbalance all the tales of circus freaks, and kings of carrot flowers. In other words, NMH may have displayed all the elements of gypsy folk music that is so in right now, but NMH-leader, Jeff Mangum, never used those elements anywhere nearly as literally as the likes of say Beirut. Where did all the irony go? And why do all these over-educated dudes in Uniqlo botton down shirts want to come off like eternal wanderers lost in the Mojave desert with only a jug of wine, and a nylon string guitar to show for it? It may be 2009, but we're gonna party like it's 1654 AD. Ok cool

Well, hold on to those Gogol Bordello albums because Brooklyn's La Strada are the latest band with more than 4 members to traffic in the kind of sweeping vagabond nostaligc gypsy styles that you will probably feel awkward listening to on your iPod considering the music sounds so legitimately old. Or maybe it's just a socio-economic thing - I'm not sure ukelele strumming gypsies can afford new 15" Macbooks, but no matter. As much as I want not to like the sheer trendiness of La Strada's selftitled debut ep (Ernest Jennings Record Co.), I find myself won over by it's dusty melodramatic heart. Perhaps I just have a rather unfair knee-jerk reaction to hate on any band named after a trendy movie (see: Noah & The Whale). Afterall, La Strada was also the name of one of Fellini's most lauded films, but I must say the whole strumming jug of wine bit suits these guys more comfortably than other bands I've heard. Despite the name, La Strada are certainly less self-consciously anachronistic than The Decemberists, but still maintain that kind of breezy wide-eyed NPR-friendly quirkiness than will be sure to soundtrack a thousand Little Miss Sunshine rip-offs. And for that, La Strada, we thank thee.

Here's "Loved You All Along" (the least "gypsy" sounding track) off of La Strada's selftitled ep out 2/24 on Ernest Jenning Record Co. :

 

 

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