Dark Continent by Wall of Voodoo

Dark Continent, Wall of Voodoo's debut studio album, came out on I.R.S. in 1981, and it sounds like a spaghetti western soundtrack beamed in from a Los Angeles garage. Stan Ridgway, Marc and Bruce Moreland, Chas T. Gray and Joe Nanini were the lineup, and the songs spin surreal little stories steeped in the imagery of the American Southwest.

It is cold, twitchy new wave with dust on its boots. "Red Light", "Animal Day", "Back in Flesh" and "Call Box (1-2-3)" had already been worked out on stage, as early live versions later collected on The Index Masters show. The band stayed mostly underground, and wider fame waited until "Mexican Radio" caught on with MTV the next year, but this is where the strange, desert-noir world first took shape.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.