Wall of Voodoo
The Index Masters

THE REVIEW

These are epochal. These started with film noir soundtracks and TV themes. In the early days, late '70s. With clear ideas. In search of a sound free from any cliché. Each track an energy and a unique atmosphere. They try and succeed on the first shot. Subversive synth-pop. Minimal melodies. Galloping guitars. Deadly riffs. Punk urgency. Percussive frenzies. Digital lashes. Drum machines galore and keyboards that are groundbreaking in new wave. The crooner voice of Stan Ridgway that sublimates everything.

Every description is limiting. Alas, it doesn’t convey. This music needs to be listened to. And there is no better occasion to do it than with this “The Index Masters.” Here we find the first two EPs of the group. Six tracks including “Ring of Fire” a classic by the legendary Johnny Cash. Vivisected, electrified, dilated, and murdered. And then “Can’t Make Love” with lyrics that seem to come from the pen of Raymond Carver. But it’s the ten bonus tracks that send Rykodisc's straight to paradise. Which is the remastered live set of one of their assault gigs at a University in California. Year 1979. Pause. Lump in throat. Outside punk rages. On this side of the ocean, anger, nihilism, and hate. Rebellion and social denunciation. Beyond the ocean always anger. But a lucid anger.

Talking heads in New York. Devolved heads in Akron. Alienated heads in Los Angeles. In underground garages. Squeezed on the stage of a club. To play their vision of the world. “My conscience calls me on the phone. I think about the past. The present. The future. And it’s always the same” proclaims Ridgway in the unedited debut “End of an Era.” No Future! Even in the city of angels. But here the walls are not destroyed. They are built. Double walls in the apartment. In the brain. To exorcize paranoia. Wall of Voodoo, precisely. Rooms like prisons. Or shelters. Only signals remotely. Via ether. Zero human contacts. Because outside there is no life anymore. And then everything goes too fast. In Los Angeles, city of corporations. Where the only thing you’re asked is to punch the clock. “No excuses. No exceptions. Punch the clock now or fuck you” (Back in flesh, the best). In Los Angeles, city of disasters. Symbol of a widespread social metastasis. In Los Angeles, the five voodoos build a fetish wall.

Cynical witness of their own unease. The wall has grown well. “Dark Continent” and “Call of the West” are two records that still surprise today, especially the first. The wall was breached only once. The killer refrain of “Mexican Radio” spread everywhere. Atypical hit for private radios. For new wave venues. For jukeboxes at Bar Mario in the provinces. Then the wall cracks. Stan Ridgway builds another in a less dark continent. Equally magical. But that first little wall remains unforgettable. The one of the rawest moments, of broken dreams, of first fires, and first voids. The one that sends shivers just thinking about it. The one that each of us can remember or discover by listening to a record like this.