Gogol Bordello’s ninth album may take its name from a famous Sex Pistols declaration, but Eugene Hütz’s traveling gypsy caravan continues to push punk into places that a young John Lydon could never have imagined. We Mean It, Man! stems from Gogol’s 2023 cover of the Angelic Upstarts’ “Solidarity,” an early-’80s Polish workers anthem given a Ukraine War-era update with the help of New Order’s Bernard Sumner. That track’s producer—post-punk veteran Nick Launay—returns to give these songs a sharpened alt-rock edge, as manifest in the opening title track’s manic melange of metallic riffs, mutant vocals, and dizzying strings. But if, to quote another Lydon maxim, anger is an energy, Gogol Bordello harnesses it with playful aplomb, reframing protest songs as party music: “Hater Liquidator” responds to mid-2020s sociopolitical tumult with chirpy garage-rock organs, storming backbeats, and gang-chant choruses, while “Ignition” sees Sumner’s lingering influence filter down into a discotheque workout that effortlessly fuses Eastern European folk melodies with ’80s synth-pop frequencies.