REVAMPED VOODOO

“SEVEN DAYS IN SAMMYSTOWN.” Wall of Voodoo. I.R.S. Stan Ridgway is gone, taking with him the smirk and the sneer that defined the Wall’s smart-ass, nightmare-in-the-fun-house stance. New singer Andy Prieboy is called on to imitate his predecessor’s arch manner only a couple of times, but when he plays it straight he isn’t distinctive enough to provide a strong focus for the band. That leaves the revamped Voodoo--which plays Friday at the Roxy--adrift as it tries to replace its jarring approach with something a little less hyper.

They sometimes smooth things to the point of blandness, especially when they set aside the rubbery twangs and clip-clop percussion of their wacky spaghetti-Western sound and go in for orchestral progressive-rock descended from “I Am the Walrus.” Their best number in that mode is “This Business of Love,” a dense swirl poured around Prieboy’s rapid-fire portraits of relationships in dissolution.

The music gets more interesting when it’s fevered or dissonant. “Room With a View,” which recounts the goings-on across the air shaft, is the former, while a clank-und-drang version of Merle Travis’ classic miner’s lament “Dark as the Dungeon” is definitely the latter.

“(Don’t Spill My) Courage” might be the most promising sign for the new Voodoo, because its strong personality doesn’t rely on past directions. It takes off at a gallop and catches you up in the narrative--a blend of the ridiculous and the sublime in which the amputee hero attacks righteous religious types who would deny him the one thing he has left: his courage. When he tells them “You’ve got the wrath of God and losing confused,” his defiance and determination close the album with a palpable lift.