By John E. Mitchell

As the summer winds down, the New England gloom ahead can be dispelled if you just have the right music to keep you going for a while longer. Best to turn to an area of the world that takes anything from the gloom of weather to the gloom of war and turns it around into a reason for a party -- Europe. This has been a great year for sounds from mainland Europe -- whether they actually came from Europeans or just Americans enamored by them.

Romanian ensemble Fanfare Ciocarlia's new CD "Queens and Kings" offers a European brass orchestra that's coming from a very unusual place – let’s just say they are apparently Danny Elfman's favorite band. Borat's, as well -- their out of control cover version of "Born to Be Wild" is well known thanks to its placement on the Borat soundtrack. Thankfully, it is also on this new release, accentuated by original songs that wouldn't seem out of place in "The Corpse Bride," or being covered by Elfman's old band, Oingo Boingo.

The enormously catchy opener, "Kan Marau La," sets the tone for the rest of the album by mixing good, basic songwriting with an upbeat arrangement that includes horns that are all over the place, propelling the rhythms and flirting wit the vocalists. "Que Dolor" sounds like a glorious Romanian take on a Gipsy Kings structure -- it deserves to be a hit -- while "Sandala" goes in a totally opposite, sounding like the soundtrack to some wacky chase scene from a Soviet era cartoon ... if such a thing existed.