SINGLE REVIEW: Voodoo Science by Demob Happy
Surprise! We've been waiting on this one for a while - seventies dreamboats Demob Happy have just announced their third studio album Divine Machines (out May 26), as well as enticing us with a sumptuous slice: new single, Voodoo Science.
Laden with luscious licks and gargantuan grooves, if Voodoo Science is anything to go by, this album is gonna be fucking glorious. With their perfectly honed glam-rock swagger and defiant "fuck the man" energy, the track is turbo-charged by a furiously funky bass riff and Matthew's mystifyingly melodic vocals. It's sprinkled with some delicious synthy magic (Daft Punk eat your fucking heart out) to create a sound that's simultaneously nostalgic and cutting-edge. A sonic call to arms, the trio waste no time in demanding societal change. “We wrote Voodoo Science as a bit of chaos - an antidote to banality - a magic potion written to defy the collective stupor of the recent past. Something to wake you up and shake you up!”
As far as the album goes, we can tell you that it'll embody a dystopian sci-fi theme that only Blade Runner could rival - whilst lyrically yearning for something more hopeful, based on the power of individual change. Frontman Matthew says “I really see what’s happening to the human race as a moment in a hero’s journey. We’re at the point in the James Bond film where the villains reveal themselves and tell us the plan. We’ve got Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, these absolute supervillains with their rockets doing whatever the fuck they want, and software guru Bill Gates buying vast swathes of farmland for who knows what. They’re all revealing their plans to humanity and we’re all still going, ‘I hope they’re the good guys!’”
“What we need is inspiration to change because we only win this war if the change starts with us. There’s huge ripples of that in society, and it’s distorted through social media, but you can see people becoming more self-aware. That’s what I wanted to write about - inspiring that change.”
Since forming more than a decade ago back in hometown Newcastle, Demob Happy - now based in Brighton - have gigged incessantly, and released two incredible albums which have racked up well over 45 million collective streams. They’ve toured the US four times, played with the likes of Jack White, cleopatrick, and Royal Blood. Amongst all that, they’ve continued to meticulously fine-tune their sound and craft; including production, which is now done by Matthew himself.
For that reason, Divine Machines is more than just an album - it's the product of Demob's entire career. “We’ve never chased the dragon of success, even though we’ve been encouraged to, but we're not interested in doing it like that. We’ve always done what we wanted, but now it seems like it might align with what other people want as well.” You can say that again!
Listen to Voodoo Science on Spotify and Apple Music
Pre-order Divine Machines here
Review by Courtney Myers
Photography by Richard Stow
