Urban Voodoo Machine are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, and what better way to celebrate than to release a compilation culled from three E.P.s, B sides and other rare tracks.
What really stands out is the quality of the tracks, flawless musicianship mixed with biting lyrics that are in places very funny, and in places display a pathos that is absent from virtually all other bands these days.
Tracks like ‘The Death Of Celestina Rose’, demonstrates this perfectly. This track was tucked away on the B side of the ‘Goodbye To Another Year’ single, and never made it on to the last album. This is a track that mixes twangy guitar with a New Orleans vibe and has lyrics that strike hard, detailing the misfortunes and eventual suicide of Miss Rose: “She couldn’t make ends meet, Her children hungry with bare feet.” What’s amazing to me is that this has never made it on to CD (except for very limited promo copies of the single) until now.
There are five tracks from the first E.P. ‘Sounds From The Urban Voodoo Machine’ which was a promo only first release and includes a stripped down version of ‘Emptiness’, the stark arrangement adding to the atmosphere, as Paul-Ronny Angel relates another sorry tale: “Down you go just like the flow in a waterfall/ You were always digging but you never found your gold/ Now you’re just another sad story that’s being told/ Your body’s gone now so have mercy on your soul.”
Added to this are all the tracks from E.P.s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, The Urban Voodoo Machine’ & ‘With Love From The Urban Voodoo Machine’, with the exception of ‘No Bail Blues’, as the E.P. version was used on the first album. Both E.P.s are rather difficult to get hold of now.
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Tracks like ‘Here Comes The Thunder’(a B side) is a first, as it’s never appeared on CD before, along with two tracks from a BBC live session with Clive Anderson, which basically means that if you’ve already got the first two albums and then get hold of this, then you’ll have every track that The Urban Voodoo Machine have committed to CD so far. This is an impressive collection, with twenty two tracks which represents a real value for money.
What never fails to impress is the musical diversity. The band move effortlessly between genres such as Balkan folk, blues, jazz and rockabilly, frequently mixing styles to produce a blend which is wholly theirs and unique. In fact this come across less as a compilation of B sides etc, and sounds more like a greatest hits album, the selections really are that good.
The band is shortly embarking on a 10th anniversary tour taking in London, Glastonbury and Leicester amongst other dates, details of which are all up on here : -
UVM Facebook page so get along to one (or more) of the dates, and get a copy of this album. It is the one must have release for the summer.
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