Ecstasy and sorrow are merely touchstones in the music of Serbo-Croatian bandleader Goran Bregovic. Along with his ever-shifting Wedding and Funeral Band, the 59-year-old composer taps into seemingly untold centuries of unrestrained emotion: from boisterous, blind-drunk abandon, matched by brassy crash-boom-bang and odd meters that wiggle like a rattlesnake, to a heart-burdened melancholy that can be consoled only by keening female voices and the gutsy rumble of the tuba’s grave, long tones.

It’s hard to believe that Alkohol, Bregovic’s latest, is his first album to be released in the U.S. But it certainly lives up to the hype, its 90-proof title an allusion to sljivovica—or slivovitz—the plum brandy that flows like lifeblood in the former Yugoslavia. The rollicking song cycle grafts traditional melodies and rhythms onto the leader’s inspired brass and percussion arrangements.

For every soulful sad song (“Ruzica”), there are at least three stompers, and the disc demonstrates an affinity for novelties (the Serge Gainsbourg–esque rap “On the Back-Seat of My Car”). Bregovic makes sure to deliver plenty of what he’s known for, and is especially keen on mergers of parallel Greek and Jewish traditions that share a love of wild, microtonal pitches, and dances that require large numbers of people to link arms and kick in circles. If you know this music only from Bregovic’s contributions to the Borat soundtrack, Alkohol offers a heady buzz.—Steve Dollar