Artist : Viagra Boys
Album : Viagr Aboys
Label : Shrimptech Enterprises
Link : https://www.vboysstockholm.com/
Style : Rock, Punk
Viagr Aboys, the Viagra Boys’ fourth album, shows that they are still at home in energetic punk rock, but that they also know how to explore more complex music to leer towards other musical horizons and renew interest.
The Viagra Boys are a Swedish band whose formation, in 2015, followed a karaoke party that took place in the tattoo parlor employing its two founders. Of the band members, singer Sebastian Murphy is the only one not born in Sweden, but with a Swedish mother, he is perfectly bilingual. After two EPs, the band released a debut album in 2018. It was well received by critics in both Sweden and the UK. The third album wins a Swedish Grammy, and in 2023, the musicians support Queens Of The Stone Age on their 15-date tour.
Their music is fully rooted in punk, and Viagr Aboys is strongly inspired by garage rock or proto-punk, always with an almost second-degree dose of off-beatness reminiscent to some extent of Devo’s approach, to which acerbic lyrics add a form of self-mockery. In addition to rhythm and guitar, the wind instruments stand out, including a saxophone that repeatedly takes a prominent place in the accompaniment, when the compositions stray from the canons of the punk-rock genre.
Perfectly in keeping with the style and image of the band’s live performances, the production of this record cultivates a haphazard, disheveled sound that may initially confuse the audiophile. However, parallels can be drawn with free jazz and avant-garde music. What’s more, while the compositions are abundant, the recording is far from muddled and doesn’t rely solely on energy, as is all too often the case in this musical style. Its clarity makes it possible to appreciate the tonalities of each instrument, as much as Sebastian Murphy’s slightly hoarse voice, which becomes softer on the last track.