Live Review: The Urban Voodoo Machine (Bradford Nightrain, 24/11/22)

 

It's fair to say that the Urban Voodoo Machine are a bit of a unique proposition in the live arena but even by their standards, this opening night to their tour in support of the new Snake Oil Engine album (Nite Songs review here) feels like a bit of a special occasion. And not just because there's surely no other band where you'll see a lead singer, Paul-Ronney Angel, be carried across to the bar by various fans/throne-bearers on top of a crash barrier like some sort of voodoo Egyptian pharoah and then manage to almost strangle himself with his own hat a few minutes later!

Tonight's set sees the seven-piece version of the Voodoos kicking up a proper storm right from the moment Empty Plastic Cup gets things underway with Angel working the crowd with all the self-assuredness of a guy who's been fronting his band for almost two decades now while behind him, his group whip up a truly hellacious racket where new songs such as the almost showband style Johnny Foreigner and the sinister Living In Fear rub shoulders with old favourites such as the chantalong Not With You and the evergreen Orphan's Lament which has the Thursday night crowd here in Bradford almost raising the roof with their singalong. At the other end of the scale, the dark Goodnight My Dear, dedicated to absent friends, definitely has a few of the audience suddenly has a few of the audience (your correspondent included) suddenly feeling a bit of a lump in their throats.

By the time a raucous Help Me Jesus (dedicated to the late Wilko Johnson who recorded it with the band), the truly ominous Emptiness and the East European rave-up of Goodbye To Another Year finish the set, it's pretty safe to say that while it may have taken the Voodoos two decades to finally get to this corner of our septic isle, there'll be a warm welcome waiting for them when they decide to come back. An encore of Angel doing a solo version of Bastard's Lullaby followed by epic runs through Love Song 666 and Down In A Hole is pretty much the cherry on the cake.

No doubt about it, still one of the best live bands around in the UK today. Go see 'em on this tour before it finishes if you know what's good for yer.

All photos by Andy Close. All rights reserved.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A brief return from the dead...

Image
  Yup, we're back. Don't all get excited at once. I’d been toying with the idea of doing an end of year list again this year and after a lot of umming and aahing eventually decided to go for it. As with last year, inevitably there were bumps along the way. As of the start of December, I thought this list would be around 40 albums but inevitably reading other people’s lists pointed me towards a bunch of stuff that had passed me by earlier in the year. Plus of course there’s always a few teasing buggers who put stuff out at the last possible moment. So 40 became 50 which became 60 which finally became 70. You lucky people. Actually though, reading through this list, the main thing that strikes me is that I think this might be the most musically varied end of year list that Nite Songs has ever done. From gentle acoustics through acclaimed indie veterans to punk thrash and good old fashioned scuzzy rock ‘n’ roll via some decidedly unexpected diversions (industrial folk music? Check...
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #90: Soho Roses - "The Third And Final Insult" (1989)

Image
  "If you won't love me then I'll find someone who will!"  - Soho Roses  - So Alone The Soho Roses were a classic case of right band, wrong time. If they'd broken on to the scene in the last few years then they'd have had a ready made audience on the 21st century power pop scene and probably be regulars at Some Weird Sin and similar club nights in the Smoke. The reality? They broke through towards the tail end of the '80s and got lumped in with the dying embers of the Soho glam scene, leaving behind one sadly underappreciated album and a few EP's before self-combusting. In a way, I sort of see the Roses as a British version of Enuff Z'Nuff. Not so much in terms of their sound but more of the fact that they were a group crowbarred in with glam who weren't really a natural fit there and kind of paid the price for it - I've always thought Enuff Z'Nuff sounded more like a Britpop band with flashbomb guitars than a hair metal band. Oh sure, ...
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #19 - The Dictators - "Go Girl Crazy!" (1975)

Image
  "Set me free, I might know better when I'm older but till then..."  - The Dictators  - Weekend By some distance the oldest album we've featured in this column so far, I very nearly went for the Dictators' 2001 comeback album DFFD  for this feature similar to what I did with the New York Dolls GDR article a couple of weeks back but after a bit of umming and ahhing, I decided it really had to be the group's 1975 debut Go Girl Crazy!  just because it's arguably the great trailblazing US punk album that everyone's forgotten about. I guess that you could almost say that if the Ramones were the Sex Pistols of US punk then the Dictators were kind of like the Eddie & The Hot Rods in that they crashlanded just that one year too early to really reap the punk whirlwind when it took off in 1976-77 but if you listen to Go Girl Crazy! , it's got the fingerprints of a lot of bands who'd come along soon afterwards on it, especially da Bruddas. The big ...
Read more