Newpoli’s latest album, Nun Te Vuta – meaning “Don’t Look Back”- is streaming at Spotify. The title is sardonic, considering that what the band plays is rooted in centuries of Mediterranean-borne, southern Italian cross-pollination. On the other hand, just like their antecedents in centuries past, they’re putting their own spin on an old sound, and half of the album is original songs. With eight people in the band, there’s a lot going on. The opening title track sets the stage, frontwomen Carmen Marsico and Angela Rossi soaring through an angst-ridden reflection on the depopulation of the countryside as a younger generation of Italians migrates to the cities, Bjorn Wennås’ acoustic guitar and mandola laying down a lush backdrop for Roberto Cassan’s warily dancing accordion, Megumi Sataaki’s violin and multi-reedman Daniel Meyers’ flute.

Bazar works its way up from a stately, suspensefully pulsing intro to a wild, wailing chorus, then back and forth, Meyers’ flute adding a bracing Middle Eastern edge. Sciure d’Arance – meaning “orange blossom” – is even more misterioso, an elegantly balletesque, mightily crescendoing, minor-key ballad, with a woundedly circumspect Jussi Reijonen oud solo at the center. The trio of chirpy dance numbers afterward make a lively, contrasting interlude: finally, about ten minutes in, the music takes a turn back into bristling minor-key terrain with a gritty staccato pulse.

Wennås’ moodily cascading guitar and Cassan’s rich washes of accordion anchor the womens’ insistent harmonies on the next number, simply titled Pizzica: it takes on a more flamenco-flavored swirl as it goes on. Even more intense is the Palestinian-tinged dirge that follows, Marsico’s voice rising with dramatic intensity over spare, funereal mandola, percussion and a stygian accordion drone. Intensity-wise, it’s the album’s high point.

The group keeps the minor-key coals burning, fueled by Cassan’s spiraling accordion, throughout the dance number after that, followed by a slow, serpentine mashup of what sounds like Elizabethan English folk and Mediterranean balladry. They close the album on a rustically otherworldly, dancing note