That voice. There's no mistaking it. The adenoidal snarl immortalized on the 1982 MTV hit "Mexican Radio." The one that challenged "Don't Box Me In" over the credits of Rumble Fish, and scaled the UK top five in 1986 with "Camouflage." It's the voice of Stan Ridgway, original singer for Wall of Voodoo. And while it's not quite the piercing bark it once was, it still has plenty of bite... even over the phone.

Ridgway makes a long-overdue Seattle appearance at the Triple Door this Wednesday, November 10, in support of his latest opus, Snakebite: Blacktop Ballads and Fugitive Songs (on redFLY Records). Featuring 16 songs, Ridgway describes the disc as an exercise in "gothic folk noir." Shady characters populate cuts like the lurching "Wake Up Sally (The Cops Are Here)" and "King for a Day," a detailed account from the POV of a crack-smoking car thief. Despite his vivid descriptions of the album's disreputable cast, Ridgway claims his own criminal record is relatively clean. "I've probably ridden in a stolen car, more than once," he admits, "but not lately."

Musically, the dusty, atmospheric songs of Snakebite bristle and twitch with stringed instruments, a sharp contrast to prior, keyboard-oriented Ridgway outings like The Big Heat. "I wanted to play a mandolin and Dobro, get back out the slide guitar, and write songs with all that in mind." He coaxed his wife and sometimes-collaborator, Pietra Wexstun, to augment her arsenal of keyboards with an accordion. On "That Big 5-0," he even provides percussion on tap shoes.

The emphasis on traditional instruments like banjo and harmonica harks back to Ridgway's earliest influences, before he became fixated with film scores. (Wall of Voodoo was originally formed as a collective of movie composers, not a traditional band.) As a child in Pasadena, the singer "fell into a stack of records" that previously belonged to his aunt. "She had collected all the old folk records, from the late '50s and early to mid-'60s: The Limelighters and the Weavers, Pete Seeger and Odetta and Josh White."

Ridgway also permits himself a look back at his own history on the penultimate cut, "Talkin' Wall of Voodoo Blues Pt. 1." "It's part one because the song is actually much longer than the version on the record," which already clocks in at six minutes. He rattles off the band's rise and fall, and pays homage to former bandmates Marc Moreland and Joe Nanni, both of whom passed away in recent years.

Although his voice has mellowed some with age, Ridgway says he's done nothing deliberate to achieve that. "I have trouble sounding like anything other than what I sound like," he says of his distinctive timbre. "The singers I like are the ones who have a direct, honest delivery--one which isn't that different from when they talk. I love Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash of course, and Bob Dylan. Bob gave us all permission to sing, even if we weren't singers."

kurt@thestranger.com