1. Land of the Dead 01:59

2. Zombie Prostitute 03:15

3. Cannibal Buffet 03:56

4. Day of the Dead 03:35

5. Blue-eyed Matador 04:44

6. Bomb New Jersey 03:20

7. Stuck With You (with Amanda Palmer) 04:32

8. Dead 03:29

9. Reggae Mortis 03:27

10. Hell in a Handbasket 04:36

Aurelio Voltaire’s 5th album from 2007

• Includes a track from the Cartoon Network movie Billy and Mandy’s Big Boogie Adventure

• Includes a duet with Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls



Carpe Noctem: “…what you might expect to hear while getting drunk at a Mexican restaurant in Transylvania on the Day of the Dead – that is, an inspired and irreverent mix of European folk and Spanish influences, with touches of swing, New Orleans jazz, country, and ska thrown in for good measure.”

 


“It’s a Halloween party in a digipak,” Voltaire comments about OOKY SPOOKY, his most hilariously irreverent CD to date. The album contains a duet with The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer, a track from a Cartoon Network movie (“Billy and Mandy’s Big Boogie Adventure”) plus his crowd-pleasing songs about zombies, devils and dancing skeletons. In fact necrophilia, cannibalism, the undead, blasphemy, sacrilege and going to hell in a hand basket are just a few of the charming topics covered on OOKY SPOOKY.


Back are the violins and cellos but new to the Voltaire sound is a horn section that brings to mind images of a mariachi skeleton band. But there is no doom and gloom here, mind you. The album bounces along with a mixture of klezmer, swing and ska that brings to mind such spooky-fun classics as Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party” or “Hell” by the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Voltaire’s love for Cab Calloway is evident in the song “Cannibal Buffet” (which seems straight from a Betty Boop cartoon) and more so in “Land of the Dead” which Voltaire wrote for the opening credit sequence of the Cartoon Network movie “Billy and Mandy’s Big Boogie Adventure.”


As serious as it gets on OOKY SPOOKY is “Stuck With You,” a duet with The Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer. It’s about a bickering married couple, but even on this one kittens are drowned, Korean bayonets are employed and skeletons sing to each other from side-by-side coffins. “I got all of the serious songs out of the way on THEN AND AGAIN,” comments Voltaire, “specifically so that OOKY SPOOKY could be a non-stop party of fun songs about the undead and hell and devils and skeletons and all of the other fun stuff that’s so close to my heart.”


All Music: “A full new winner in the realm of truly black humor. With Voltaire happily embracing mariachi horns as a new element to his music — not perhaps as sudden a shift as Johnny Cash adding them to “Ring of Fire,” but with a similarly enjoyable effect, matched with the great cover art — the result is probably one of the best musical fusions all around, not to mention a perfect Tejano album under another name (not too strange when you realize the Eastern European origins of both that and Voltaire’s previous efforts as a whole). The kick-up-your-heels, if your feet haven’t rotted away, kick of lead single “Zombie Prostitute” was already familiar — “I had a stiffy/For the stiff in front of me” is just one perfect line of snark among many — and unsurprisingly benefits from both the swirling strings and the brass interjections in equal measure. Meanwhile, seemingly the-joke-is-all-in-the-title efforts like “Bomb New Jersey” and “Reggae Mortis” prove to be thorough gutbusters, while Amanda Palmer from the often similarly-minded Dresden Dolls takes a great guest turn on “Stuck with You,” a duet between obsessively dueling lovers who take it all the way to the grave and beyond. Throughout, Voltaire’s excellent singing remains his not-so-secret weapon, jauntily vocalizing about white boy bullfighters and cannibal banquets with total élan.”