Viag Raboysreview

Hey baby, can I borrow your car?
I wanna drive into a wall and make us two-dimensional

Welcome to the wonderful, wonky world of Swedish post-punk absurdists the Viagra Boys. I used to see the name in gig lists a lot and always thought it was a good one, without exploring any further until my son saw them this year and hipped me to their compellingly odd ways.

Their album Viagr Aboys is by far my fave LP of the year thus far and my most played, the whole family love it*.

I'm touching myself by the health food shelf

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So how to describe Viagr Aboys? hmm. Musically the band are guitar, bass, synth, drums and occasional sax/clarinet/flute. Viagra Boys rock a deep bass that sounds occasionally like Jean-Jacques Burnel at his most assertive, washes of synths that make me think of the Cars without sticks up their arses, plucking punk odd bits from X-Ray Spex and then they shake you with glimpses of Ween-adjacent country stylings, rave disco corners and even a shard of real feeling towards the end.

I am a man that's made of meat
You're on the internet looking at feet

Above all though Viagr Aboys is an LP that is dominated by their vocalist Sebastian Murphy. His voice is a wonderfully compelling thing and his lyrics are at once surreal and all too real, the real sweet spot between a jovial William Burroughs and Iggy Pop trashed on vitamin pills of dubious provenance. It is very sensible to pay close attention to any man with a forehead tattoo, as my granny often used to say.

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As always on a Viagra Boys album there are songs taking down hyper-toxic masculinity, conspiracies and basement trolls, although they are less direct on Viagr Aboys, more character studies this time around**.

Take the ‘Man Made Of Meat’ who is a flexin’ strutin’ sneerin’ type of man, ‘If it was 1970 / I’d have a job at a factory’. Needless to say this is a flexin’ strutin’ sneerin’ tune, with an utterly wicked rhythm that I can’t quite believe is allowed under international law.

Second cut is ‘The Bog Body’ a dense track where our heroes get quite aerated about the differences between an ancient body preserved in a bog vs. one in a swamp^, with a side order of sexual jealousy served up in a taut self-contained fashion. Word up.

In a bid not to do my usual^^ I will accelerate to hyperspeed and bring you some highlights:

1. The light female vocal touches on the poptastic ‘Uno ii’.
2. The lick of an ashtray flavour of ‘Pyramid Of Health’.
3. The masturbatory Burroughsian yelp of ‘Dirty Boyz’, with its classy synth stylings and magnetic pulsebeat.
4. The widescreen widescreed dignity of ‘Medicine For Horses’, which were it not for an odd obsession with spinal fluid could be Arcade Fire.
5. ‘Remember that dude who looked like a raisin?’ (cue Cars-Weezer-like synths)
6. The dance-jazz adjacently cacophonous ‘Store Policy’.
7. Straight indie punk ‘You N33d Me’ and its heady mix of drink fuelled hedonism and misleading general knowledge.
8. The boastiferous preachifying of ‘Best In Show Pt. iv’.
9. A lovely gentle ending.

So if any of that appeals then you are precisely the sort of left-wing, drug secreting, free-thinking weirdo that Viagr Aboys is targeting; you sicko!

The dirty boys come out when you are sleepin'
They collect a bunch of useless fucking shit

Playing it through again just now it is striking just how frictionless a confection this is, there are very few harsh noises and bones to choke on. Overall Viagr Aboys is the aural equivalent of an ultra-processed cheese-slicked end times convenience food; everything is lubricant here, designed to release these beats straight down your throat.

This is a fun album, its good to go strolling with the grotesques once in a while, slurping up occasional wisdom, laughs and grooving on their irresistible beats. There are lessons to be learned here and also absolutely nothing of any real consequence; both these sentences are true.

Buy this LP. Now.

I floated down a black river into an ancient structure resembling Skeletor's lair

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My copy of Viagr Aboys is a fancy pants version from Rough Trade Records on transparent pink/white vinyl and a CD with a couple of extra tracks that I have yet to hear because I don’t own anything to play it on/in now I’ve changed cars. The artwork freaks me out a touch, but I am a wuss.

1294 Down.

*the phrase ‘I found a crouton underneath a futon’ (from the track ‘Uno II’) has wormed its way into almost every 1537 internal family communication since April. As has the line about ‘your mom’s Only Fans’ in ‘Man Made Of Meat’.

**if this titillates your woke mind virus like it does mine, may I direct you towards their cuts ‘Down In The Basement’, ‘Troglodyte’ and ‘Sports’; they’re all just fucking great.

^pickling vs. decomposition, since you ask.

^^write about the first 5 tracks in grinding, migraine inducing detail and then realise that I need to stop because, brilliantly informative, entertaining and joyously gifted as my writing is, nobody wants to read a doctoral-level screed about the spiral scratch I’m currently obsessed with.