POLKA MADRE

POLKA MADRE
CASA DONDE (2008)
256 KBPS

Polka Madre literally means “mother polka.” It’s also a pun on puta madre, one of the most vulgar Mexican curses, and a derivative of poca madre, an untranslatable and distinctly chilango phrase that can express utmost disgust or enthusiasm. It’s an apt name for a band that filters the world’s music through the world’s largest metropolis, sighing out elegant folk songs through the gritted teeth and biting grime of Mexico D.F., electrifying old sounds to make them heard again above the noise of the 24 million other chilangos that inhabit the megalopolis.
The story begins when Eric Bergman (vocals, guitar, mandolin), a Finn raised in America and schooled in England, met Marina de Ita (keyboards, accordion) while traveling through Mexico D.F. in early 2004. The two began performing minimal and melancholy music at the weekly Jueves de Kramer, an underground arts night in a warehouse space on the city’s nderdeveloped south side. A rotating cast of barflies and bohemians would join them on stage, and their music coalesced around something sinister, drunken, and Eastern European, elegantly stumbling between klezmer, polka, and circus music.
After a few months the police shut down the Jueves de Kramer, but Eric and Marina had built up a solid repertoire and recruited Enrique Perez (clarinet), a classically-trained virtuoso who was eager to push the boundaries of his training by delving into the occult underbellies of jazz and the avant-garde. Over the next year, Eric, Marina, and Enrique herded a rotating cast of musicians of varying levels of talent and sobriety across Mexico and Europe. After a year and a half of hard touring, Polka Madre became a steady quintet, with punk rock train-hopper Andrew Cameron (U.S.A., bass), and highly-trained percussionist Raymundo Vera filling out the rhythm section. The band members turned over their lives to music, quitting their day jobs and living on tortillas and onion soup from gig to gig.
Live shows grew increasingly theatrical, incorporating false moustaches, equal parts shirtlessness and dandyhood, and liberal dabs of alcohol-scented sweat. Their audience grew alongside their ambitions, and they regularly drew 500-strong crowds around Mexico. In spring 2006, Polka Madre recorded their debut full-length, Infausta Noticia, and took off on a 40-stop U.S. tour to promote the album, followed by multi-month jaunts around Mexico and Europe that kept the band busy well into 2007.
When Polka Madre weren’t touring, they were busy assimilating the wide array of influences that they had encountered during their travels. The band had spent three months mingling with members of New York’s gypsy-punk scene and toured Mexico with backbeat-heavy hillbilly revivalists the Can Kickers. Their rhythm section stepped up its tempos to take on a punk-rock furor, while Marina and Enrique crafted multi-faceted melodies that touched down all over Europe and Latin America, and Eric tied it all together with simple song structures and cryptic imagery. Their upcoming album, Casa Donde, is as timeless and out-of-time as the crowd of shantytown-dwelling nacos, glue-huffing punkeros, and fresa art-scenesters that walk the chilango streets.

1 Intro (Mexico City)
2 Niña, Olga, Vodka
3 Circo Del Siglo
4 Le Fin Du Monde
5 Triplets
6 Karjalainen Tanssi
7 Vida Propia
8 Sirenitas En El Espacio
9 Toca Mi Cuerpo
10 Funeral/Brahms
11 Herasin Kuoleena
12 Gitanas Mojadas
13 Riihikirkonhymni
14 Los Ciegos
15 Funeral De Marina