Wall of Voodoo
The Ugly Americans in Australia (And Bullhead City, AZ)

For those who might not know them, the Wall of Voodoo were an extraordinary Californian new wave group from the late seventies and early eighties, one of the most original and appreciated of all time. Their name is closely linked with Stan Ridgway, the band’s first highly original vocalist. Back then, the term “alternative” still had a strong meaning, associated with bold and unconventional musical choices. Working within the same hypothetical inspiration vein as Devo, the Wall of Voodoo took inspiration from the western epic and noir films rather than science fiction, as the seminal band from Akron had done. What emerged was an innovative, rigid, and industrial sound, but profoundly human. The almost robotic musicality became a vivid and pulsating backdrop to Stan Ridgway's semi-catatonic voice and his eerie harmonica counterpoints. Since Stan's departure in 1983, a year after the epochal ‘Call of the West’ and their appearance before more than 100,000 people at the US FESTIVAL in San Bernardino, the Wall of Voodoo with the Moreland brothers nonetheless continued their artistic journey. With new vocalist Andy Prieboy, a fairly well-known figure in the American wave scene of the eighties, they tried to reinvent the band, confirming and updating its sound. In part, they succeeded. The musical choices became somewhat compromising at times, without excessively distorting the group's stylistic hallmark. The electronics softened, becoming more of a material element of pure reference, while Marc Moreland's guitar found more space and importance. In the end, the music became more accessible, still dark and swirling, but decidedly less creative.

With Andy Prieboy on vocals, the Wall of Voodoo released two studio albums before they finally faded away. Their epitaph is represented by a little-known and erroneously underrated live album, ‘The Ugly Americans in Australia’, a record worth rediscovering, starting from its magnificent cover. It faithfully documents their 1986 tour in the “down under” continent, where they achieved some success, even brushing the peaks of the national charts with the unlikely single “Do it again”, a cover of Brian Wilson's famous song. Well, I won't compare this album with absolute masterpieces like ‘Call of the West’ or ‘Dark Continent’. Such a comparison would not do justice to an album that, in my opinion, excellently synthesizes the second era of Wall of Voodoo. And for this reason, ‘The Ugly Americans in Australia’ should be rediscovered outside the context of the general downsizing in which it was generated and its posthumous release, which left critics and the public rather indifferent.

First, let's debunk a myth. The hiring of Prieboy in place of Ridgway was not a bad deal for the Moreland brothers at all. On the contrary, I find his mocking nasality to be quite coherent with the baritonal timbre of his incomparable predecessor. From an instrumental point of view, in 1986 the band was at the height of its maturity and displayed excellent mastery of their instruments, certainly greater than that of the early decade where they compensated for youthful inexperience with a strong provocative charge. ‘The Ugly Americans in Australia’ is therefore a pulsating and vital live album, at times even overwhelming. Deprived of studio comforts, the Wall of Voodoo bravely tackled the old material and pleasantly surprised with the new. Witness the extraordinary recovery of the spectral ‘Ring of Fire’, the famous cover of Johnny Cash, hypnotic and rarefied as in the best versions of Stan Ridgway. I almost think of Alan Rev's Suicide, but that's a whole other story… Another mention goes to the irresistible pseudopop of ‘The Heart Never Can Tell’, at the opening of the second side, always balanced between post-punk sounds, electronics, and Morricone-esque references. The synthesizers are a bit obtrusive, sure, but the song works well. Also excellent are the versions of the “more recent” hits like ‘Far Side of Crazy’ and ‘Wrong Way to Hollywood’ and more than decent interpretations of the old classics, ‘Red Light’ and ‘Mexican Radio’. The latter is the song that made them known even here, a skewed “border” gallop that captured the spirit of those days and places, distant and fascinating. ‘The Ugly Americans in Australia’ is overall an album rich with interesting ideas that could still surprise you today. In the cassette version, which I still keep, there are two more tracks worth mentioning. A ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ by Woody Guthrie, covered with an electric patina that ends up reviving its spirit, and an equally valid ‘Grass is Greener’ that completes a composite picture of songs in the scent of Greatest Hits.

My opinion is that Andy Prieboy’s Wall of Voodoo could have earned a future different from what fate reserved for them. In reality, they had just hinted at a certain potential, but their cards were already all uncovered on the table. And those were no longer the right times for the relaunch of such a naïve and inevitably extravagant sound, a hypothetical intersection point between electronics and Americana. No one before and no one after them tried again; try to find me a single name that can be compared to them and don’t talk to me about Calexico and other various oddities. When they also lost the support of their longtime mentor, that Miles Copeland who had supported them with his I.R.S. from the start, the guys surrendered. It was the end of the great American new wave dream, which only R.E.M. and a few others worth remembering survived...