BY Tom Cheyney

Although visa problems prevented their two Roma members from coming stateside, France’s Les Yeux Noirs again proved their mettle as master navigators of the celebration and sorrow at the heart of the Central and Eastern European musical experience. Sure, the rad-trad textures of Marian Miu’s clippety-clop cimbalom and Constantin Bitica’s teetering accordion were missed, but their absence opened up more space for the remaining six. François Perchat’s moody cello gained audibility, its latticelike lines fingerlacing Eric and Olivier Slabiak’s blue-hot violins. The rhythm section breathed with the conjoined gusto of Pascal Rondeau’s right-place, right-time guitar, Franck Anastasio’s EKG-charting bass and Aidje Tafial’s sneaky, subtle drums.

When the violins cranked up on “Sanie Cu Zurgale,” “Joc de Loop” and “Calusul,” tempos careened in ever-tightening, ludicrously speedy spirals. You could almost hear some moonshine-swilling dance caller clapping his hands, stomping his feet and shouting, “Faster, faster, faster!” The brothers Slabiak shook their hips like Buddha Bar regulars, leaned on or faced off at each other, bowing wildly, their fingers blurring across the frets. Eric really shredded as string-cheese-like threads came off his bow, the physicality of his playing escalating with each chorus.

Exultation gushed when tempos raced, but the band also drove home the stakes of lamentation. The tenderness of “Lluba” and “Rozinkhes” lingered in a soft melancholic light, while a sense of dread enveloped “Yiddishe Mame,” its haunted house of melody darkened by spectral trip-hop shadows. On the ballads as well as on “Tchaye” and other sing-along rave-ups, the band’s robust vocal harmonies made them more than just another flight of high-speed stringmen.