Album Review: Voodoo Bloo - 'The Blessed Ghost'

New Zealand lads Voodoo Bloo's album The Blessed Ghost is coming on Friday July 15. The countdown clock has been on since they dropped the first taste of the album in November 2021, Skin, and they've been dropping breadcrumbs and bangers ever since then. It's hard to not hear maturity beyond their early 20s years in this record, a darkness, a perspective usually reserved for someone mare advanced in years, but the NZ band are proficient in taking these dark undertones and making them feel cathartic and healing.

You can pre-save/pre-order the record here now.

The album is incredibly personal for frontman Rory McDonald. The album kicks off with 'The Blessed Ghost (Younger Then)' - which is actually a missive that sounds like Rory recorded as a message on someone's voicemail, almost to himself. It's a reflective monologue that sets the tone for the record, and finishes with a sombre singalong. 

He said about the record in their album bio that "Our First album 'Jacobus' took a lot out of me. It felt like a moment where I'd finally passed on the torch of my friend who had left me, but I was still in the dark. After speaking with my therapist, she seemed to think that it was quite common for artists of any kind to feel this sort of low after finishing any major project, so instead of revelling in it, I tried to grasop on to it. At first, the concept for me was to come up with a fictional love interest, someone so perfect for me that I would always have my soulmate in 10 or so tracks or material, but as the writing progressed, I realised something quite odd. This fictional person was just everything that I did not like about myself, in all ways shapes and forms. I'd started to write about my own demons and they were glaring at me, and that's when I finally figured out what The Blessed Ghost was. This album is not a story of a young adult trying to make his way through life, a breakup story or even one of loss, this was truly an adventure into self-discovery, and it's affected me in such a way that I know I'll never be able to look at this time without pain-staking clarity because of it. For all intents and purposes, I am The Blessed Ghost, or more importantly was The Blessed Ghost, a true mirror image of not only everything I disliked about myself, but a guide as to how I can better myself every day of my life, for as long as I can hear this album, I will be glad in knowing that I have come so far and done so much.  My own musical therapist, my demons locked up or slain, The Blessed Ghost."

Overall the album feels like what Kings of Leon, Interpol, Turnstile, Oasis, The Killers and Citizen put together in a room would turn out as an album in 2022. It's an incredible sonic listen, the depth of sound in the record is fantastic - each instrument and vocal masterfully given their space to breathe and shine. It has JUST the right amount of big commercial rock shine, along with the melancholy, talent and dark edge of that 'first record' from a band who is about to be critically and commercially lauded and rocketed into the atmosphere. 

Stand out tracks on the record: 'We're Here, Love is Somewhere Else', 'Default'. 'Tomorrow Person', 'Continuous Stimulus'

'We're Here, Love is Somewhere Else' was a single from the record and it's the track that probably sets the theme and feel of the record overall. This is the track that I think sums up the album and the band's current output the most. It's the song that if you were going show people the band. Like, you know when someone says 'Show me a picture of your GF/BF/partner' you have THE picture that you show people, the one that like *shows off* your partner, the one that both you find absolutely gorgeous, but they would also agree is their best photo? Yeah, that's 'We're Here, Love is Somewhere Else'.

Default was used on the AFL Friday Night Footy match highlights reel and it's easy to see why - a high energy track thatis easily the most 'punk' of the lot, it's fast-paced and a little ripper of a tune - and certainly I would take a punt as to say this would have to be a solid standout in their live set, and hopefully they finish with this one?


Tomorrow Person feels like the track that would be used in the final moments of a movie soundtrack - it just feels like the song would begin as one of the main characters takes a chance to tell the other how they feel about the other, and as the track hits about 1:40, the first kiss happens, the camera swirls around them and as the credits begin to roll, we see that hopeful moment where the couple get together and we are left to imagine that from that moment, all is right in their worlds.

'The Blessed Ghost (older now)' is the penultimate track on the record and it's an excellent acoustic track and comes with all the requisite feels that comes with the bookend of something that was set up at the start of the record - and it has an acutely Oasis feel to it. You know that feeling that Oasis' Champagne Supernova gives you? That 'I don't know what the fuck a Champagne Supernova is and what he's singing about or why he's going faster than a cannonball, but MAN, I FEEL what he is singing about, it's making me sad and hopeful and reminiscent and loved up all at once' feeling? Yeah, that.

Continuous Stimulus feels like an encore after 'The Blessed Ghost (older now)' - with the band REALLY unleashing from about the 1:40 minute mark, thrashing it out and leaving nothing on the field of the record. The chains are off, cast aside and you can feel the manic energy and catharsis being released.

By the end of the song and the record, one gets the sense that McDonald has worked through the aforementioned demons and has come to peace with them and embraces them now - and it's exciting as hell to see what that new energy will bring from the NZ quartet next.