Gig Review: Viagra Boys At Alexandra Palace

At Alexandra Palace, Viagra Boys prove their growth isn’t about polish but about sharpening chaos into something bigger and bolder.

Viagra Boys are a band going from strength to strength. The truly difficult to pin down Swedish punk outfit are moving deeper into their own sound and personality while still keeping it fresh and interesting. Their performance at Alexandra Palace - their largest headline show to date - was fatefully emblematic of that. 

Even on the bus to the venue and outside, was the palpable sense of excitement for what might be the best contemporary live act going, no longer up and coming but here. 

To get the crowd going, Get Down Services were the perfect starter for a night of sweaty, topless, slightly out of shape men sneering caustic, belligerant and psychedelic lyrics over chunky grooves and driving funk. With anthemic songs called names like, “Dog Dribble,” and lyrical flourishes such as, “it smells like poo in here,” their parting shot at the venue before leaving the stage - shouting down the mic, “ally pally can suck a fart out my arse,” was certainly in keeping with the ethos. This was apparently indicative of some tension between both acts and the venue. The crowd ate it up. 

For Viagra Boys themselves, opening with “Man Made of Meat,” as the front man, Sebastian Murphy, pulled his top off, kept that vibe going, but his announcement that his parents were in the audience for the first time added a strong sentimental note. 

Managing to maintain intimacy and a personal connection with the audience despite the size of the sold out venue, the later rendition of ‘Pyramid of Health,’ hit a little harder with his admission that he was experiencing chronic back pain. Maybe this hit home even more for the Friday night crowd, standing up for the first time after a week hunched over working from home or in the 

office, maybe distracted by social media, consuming the brain wormed content parodied and pastiched in Viagra Boys lyrics. The emotional atmosphere kept up, with shout outs to deceased former guitarist Benjamin Valle, before the brooding, “Medicine For Horses,” and another to Murphy’s fiance before the ballad, “River King.” This alongside leading a passionate chant for the liberation of Palestine. 

All this vulnerability, though, served only to enhance that feature which makes Viagra Boys what they are: a truly frenetic and chaotic live act with piles of energy and a good excuse to push each other around. The performance delivered this in a high dose, the truly defining element. Long term crowd favourites like ‘Sports,’ really kicked things off, so much so that the set was partly interrupted by the venue security. 

I’ve been lucky enough to see them three times, and each time has delivered something different. The first time in 2019 introduced the raw and irreverent live act, with the tattoo covered and sunglassed frontman writhing around on stage in front of the tight but still raw band, with a brass section providing just the right amount of cacophony. The second, last year, showed what happens when that develops a dedicated fan base who can anticipate and sing along to every tune.

Their recent Alexandra Palace performance showed them as still more than that, the deliberately crude elements of the lyrics hiding the intellectual and emotional depth, and the ability of the band to range from out and out indie/punk/almost pop anthem, to break down into strange, uncomfortable, discordant experimental noise with 60 seconds of each other, showing their versatility, creativity and ironically, maturity.

Photography By: Alexandra Palace (c) Patrick Gunning