The Urban Voodoo Machine

15 Shots From the Urban Voodoo Machine

All the singles from rockhorror revenants.

Walk down the right stairs in what’s left of old London town’s rock’n’roll dens, and the Urban Voodoo Machine’s brew of gypsy blues, burlesque and comic horror will likely be waiting. They are stubborn holdouts for a riotous lifestyle of stimulants, sex and tar-black humour, and reach back to the primitive, bone-shaking birth of rock, blues and jazz for the soundtrack. If they drove a car it would be Christine, and they surely bleed Jack Daniel’s.

This chronological singles comp immediately proves it is more than pastiche. ‘I’m out of my head, out of my mind,’ PaulRonney Angel growls on opening rockabilly salvo Always Out, and the spectres of depression, death, poverty and eviction haunt a party which frequently becomes a wake.

Crazy Maria is a particularly affecting vignette of a difficult soul, and Fallen Brothers’ subdued guitar and bass drum waltz remembers the band’s own casualties, Robb Skipper and Nick Marsh. Meanwhile, While We Were Asleep and January Blues spit in the eye of the racist, greedy, no-fun plague afflicting the land, whose victims include the venues they call home. They won’t quit without a fight, a dance, and another unwise round.