Viagra Boys - Viagr Aboys Review

Both more absurd and more emotionally exposed than ever, Viagr Aboys sees Viagra Boys wrestle with their own cartoonish persona and the bleak reality it was meant to parody.

The full-throated belch that erupts from Sebastian Murphy’s mouth to punctuate the opening line of Man Made of Meat, the lead single and opening salvo of Viagr Aboys, lets you know the Boys are very much back. Back and on puerile form once again, but as always, not everything that comes out of Seb Murphy's mouth should be taken at face value (side note: is it possible to burp ironically?) as Viagra Boys are intent on skewering everything and everyone in our bewildering topsy-turvy world, including most of all it seems, themselves.

In fact, self-sabotage has been an integral part of the brand from the very start. Promotional materials for the American/Swedish post-punk quintet often refers to The V Boys, truncating the well known brand of erectile dysfunction medication. And I can't help wondering if their rise (sorry) to success was made harder (not sorry) by the fact they lumbered themselves with such a spam-filter triggering name. But as indicated by the size of the venues on their current tour, it’s clear the years of relentless touring have paid off and Viagra Boys are enjoying some well-earned success.

This, their fourth album, will be enjoyable for anyone already sold on the band’s obnoxiously sweaty, bass-heavy sound. There are plenty of knuckleheaded punk-rock riffs propelling the tunes, and never mind telegraphed, some of the choruses are practically waved in by semaphore. But their approach has never been straightforward, as pulsing electronics fill out the mix and deceptively complex musicianship hides under the surface, elevating the band’s sound and making it harder to pigeon-hole. And we are exposed to a more tender side of Viagra Boys, on the majestic Medicine for Horses and the poignant River King, which closes the album on a crushingly bittersweet note. 

Thematically, Viagr Aboys takes aim at similar targets to previous albums. 2021's Welfare Jazz could be seen as a send-up of boorish masculinity; the wannabe rock’n’roller who sees his hedonistic pursuit of intoxication on drink, drugs and casual sex as some kind of higher calling. Cave World attempted something more ambitious and situated that archetype in a grander narrative, which charted humanity’s evolution from apes and biblical fall from grace, to our modern information and technology-overload society. The worst exemplars of masculinity in this world are the conspiratorial blood-thirsty loners, who we ought to banish back to the jungle, had we not traded physical prowess for language and self-awareness, and are now too attention-addled by technology to do anything about it. 

But like anyone attempting to satirise mid-20s society, Seb Murphy seems to have been outdone by reality. Rather than a fringe mindset, the strain of thinking embodied by the incel/conspiracy theorist/keyboard warrior now runs to the highest sources of global power. And while it makes something of an  appearance on Viagr Aboys, Murphy has retreated to a place of self-reflection. And the characters he creates here, although cartoonish, farcical, absurd, grotesque and generally hilarious, feel a little less consequential; and there’s an understandable sense that anger has given way to despair.

And despite their efforts to not be taken seriously, it’s obvious The Viagra Boys are a deeply thoughtful and creative band. And as well as being an atavistic front-man and smart lyricist, Seb Murphy possesses exceptional comedic delivery. Whether it’s the stream of consciousness on Man Made of Meat that runs from “Overweight freaks riding round on wheelchairs…made by goblins” who go home to “watch TV about a man called Chandler Bing who died in a freak hot tubbing accident”; or Uno II, told from the perspective of his pet dog and which rivals Wet Leg for incorporating obscure furniture in an amusing way, “I found a crouton, underneath the futon, Mama said I couldn’t eat it ‘cos all my teeth are gone”, vivid imagery continuously spills from his mouth in an unpredictable cadence.

But it’s the moments where Murphy bears more of his own soul that are the most arresting. Medicine for Horses finds him at his most desolate, asking his wife if he can borrow her car so he can drive into a wall and ‘make himself two-dimensional’, over a barren arrangement punctuated by chiming Pixies-eseque guitar and totemic drums that evoke the ‘great plains of North America’ referenced in lyrics. The urge to just check-out, whether mentally by getting one’s “pineal gland re-calcified”, or out of this physical plane altogether is a powerfully relatable one when things get rough. If there’s a shred of hope to be found it’s in the singer’s plea to pass something on to his child (albeit a mason jar containing his spinal fluid).

The record’s weak points appear when it seems to retread old ground without adding anything new. Over a pulsing disco-beat and hearty sprays of saliva, Dirty Boyz paints a picture of gangs of mutant thugs hunting the streets to add to their mud-soaked masses. Another angle on toxic masculinity or just the fever dream of an over-stimulated mind? Either way it feels like we’ve been here before.

But these minor lows are more than overshadowed by the relentless sensory onslaught that is Viagra Boys. Absurd images, non-sequiturs and fragments of profundity fly past like an endless doom-scroll, and the band’s sound is fuller and richer than ever. A quaking juggernaut of distorted guitars, synthesisers and walloping rhythms that veers from straight-up punk, to disco via 90s college rock. Helmed by longtime producer and veteran of the Swedish punk scene, Pelle Gunnerfeldt, it’s a seething, roiling mass that goes out of its way to conceal its own artistry.

In fact, Viagra Boys could be a great, no nonsense, 3-chord, straight-up punk band if they just stopped taking everything so damn seriously.