The Benka Boradovsky Band - Polkapocalypse

Rating:

* * *

This Auckland gypsy polka party band, led by the bearded, mostly shirtless, and always enigmatic singer and clarinet player Benka Boradovsky (real name Ben Cragg), have injected the Romani spirit and a fair amount of vodka into the local music scene in the past few years.

It's not surprising, then, that the band's debut album is often rambling and shambolic, with moments of poetic poise like on the meandering and manic

Crack of Doom

and the instrumental jig of

Cigarette Juice

.

As a singer Benka is part storyteller and part village drunkard. His spoken rantings on

The

Attack of the Desert Sharks

("They are not just sharks, they are shark men and shark women"), are made more nerve-racking by the chaotic mess of instruments behind.

With a sound based around accordion, clarinet, electric guitar, and lashings of laughs (they do a beautifully inebriated cover of the Dead Kennedy's

Too Drunk To F***

),

Polkapocalypse

is theatrical, rebellious and fun party music. It's a hoot, although it might verge on novelty value for some.

The band play a farewell show of sorts on Saturday at Auckland's Kings Arms before heading off to Berlin for six months. The live tracks included here give some indication about how crazed the gig is likely to be. As Benka says before

Chusidl

, "If you do not dance to it, you will die."

Scott Kara