Voltaire
“Boo-Hoo”
(Eat Me Records)
Voltaire is a man with a broken heart. I was afraid that fourteen tracks of broken-heartedness would be a little hard to take, but the man has a nasty sense of humor (see the snide “Future Ex Girlfriend”) and is cleverly self-deprecating in addition to being nattily groomed (his sports a chin strap that would make Scot Pollard proud). To prevent listeners from leaping from fortieth-floor windows of the Heartbreak Hotel, Voltaire wisely stops “Boo-Hoo” for an intermission of sorts, with three unabashedly goofy
songs (“The Vampire Club” is the campiest but most enjoyable of the three) thrown into the middle of the album to lighten the mood. The album is also worth checking out just for the instrumentation, which is a far cry from the mainstream, as Voltaire’s back-up musicians include Matthew Goeke on cello and Gregor Kitzis on violin. At times, “Boo-Hoo” gets bogged down in thematic redundancy, but don’t let that stop you from grabbing a tissue and giving it a spin.
