Take Only What You Can Carry by Gogol Bordello

Take Only What You Can Carry by Gogol Bordello feat. KAZKA

“Take Only What You Can Carry” encapsulates emotional message of uprooted people whose lives were destroyed by this fucked up war in Ukraine. The idea was to bring 3 very different Ukrainian artists together responding to the situation ASAP. Oleksandra Zaritska of Ukrainian synth pop group Kazka band brings cathartic justice to lyrics of Serhiy Zhadan, a punk rocker and Nobel Prize nominated writer and poet from hard-fighting city of Kharkiv. Translated into English by great Virlana Tkacz and me. We’ve never used someone else’s poetry before, but this is coming out of exceptional on all levels and I’m very proud of this collaboration.

“This is music of survival and perseverance. That’s always been our main driving force,” declares GOGOL BORDELLO frontman Eugene Hutz about their new album SOLIDARITINE (release date: September 16, 2022 via Casa Gogol/Cooking Vinyl). “We just want to give the world a timeless album with messages of human potential and power.” Their eighth full-length album is inspired by survival in the face of adversity – a theme that can be applied to the pandemic just as much as it can be applied to the war going on in his native Ukraine.

“Our music was always about perseverance,” exclaims Eugene. “Rock ‘n’ roll comes out of a real place. Take a group of people who have endured immigrant traumas and dislocation. They create music, get successful together, become more baroque and experimental, and experience some years of relative calm. All of a sudden, humankind encounters these problems like the pandemic and the war. This is when rock ‘n’ roll is the most necessary and where we perform the best.”