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.