Viva Voce Issue #29

Get Yr Blood Sucked Out (Barsuk)

By Jeremy Ohmes
Published: September 1st, 2006 | 12:00am

The male-female musical two-piece phenomenon is out of control. It’s almost impossible to walk five feet in the music underground without running into a brother-sister, boyfriend-girlfriend, husband-wife, ex-lover-divorcée duo. It makes for great PR and all, but oftentimes it’s more shtick than substance with one person carrying the musical weight for the pair. Thankfully, there are exceptions like Viva Voce, who work by the two’s company, three’s a crowd blueprint and still create great music without gimmicks or marketing glaze.

A husband-and-wife team that’s been kicking just below the surface for eight years, Viva Voce has created a deceptively poppy psychedelic rock record on their fourth release, Get Yr Blood Sucked Out. Songs like “From the Devil Himself” are replete with primal beats, hand-clap breakdowns, and backward looping guitars that dip the listener into a dark and seductive fuzzed-out pool of pop. The epic, eight-minute, Who-inspired “So Many Miles” is built on a bedrock of pummeled toms and chugging organs and bass before a slow, feedback-soaked guitar solo collides with a cackling horn section in a smash-up of sticks, strings, and stubbed fingers.

From the sultry, Dixie-stomp of opener “Believer” to the cinematic orchestral chant of closer “How to Nurse a Bruised Ego Back to Health,” Get Yr Blood Sucked Out is a flight of fancy that perches itself in psych-pop stylings and then scatters at the first sign of pigeonholing. What’s most impressive though is that Viva Voce recorded, performed, and produced the record themselves in their home. Love may be blind, but it sure has good ears.