Viagra Boys – Viagr Aboys
Swedish post-punk ironists Viagra Boys came out pretty much fully formed on their 2018 debut, Street Worms, and have mercifully – and mercilessly – stuck to their throbbing signature sound ever since. If anything, their relentless touring and festival schedule has sharpened their satirical observations and musical smarts, with Stateside road trips bringing them into the heartland of the toxic masculinity and conspiratorial mumbo-jumbo that fuel Sebastian Murphy’s bizarre character studies.
Their fourth record, Viagr Aboys, kicks off with the one-two-three punch of the album’s first trio of singles. The opener, Man Made of Meat, plunges us straight into the boys’ surrealist bag (“They watch TV about a man called Chandler Bing who died in a freak hot tubbing accident”), and introduces the existentialist themes that loosely tie together this riotously fun collection of caustic caricatures.
The album may not have the conceptual throughline of 2022’s Cave World, nor its weird electronic interludes, but it delivers another 11 unskippable tracks skewering everything from sexism (The Bog Body) to New Age health fads (Pyramid of Health). And their subject matter continues to explore absurd nether regions, including the Ween-like Medicine for Horses, an 80s-sounding cry about preserving your spinal fluid; while the fantastic, flute-filled Uno II is told from the point of view of Murphy’s dog (“I found a crouton / underneath a futon”).
The only earnest moment comes in the final track, River King, a piano ballad where Murphy croons about love, video games and Chinese food – though even this is subverted by acerbic lyrics (“Tastes like sour meat / but I’ve had worse so I don’t mind”) and the gentle chatter and scraping of cutlery in the mix. Musically, they play with an off-kilter 11/8 rhythm on You N33d Me, which combines romantic lyrics with historical facts, and nightmarish dancehall punk in Store Policy, a handy guide to getting kicked out of your local supermarket (“Smoking crypto is bad for your health / I’m touching myself by the health food shelf”).
And while Viagr Aboys frontloads the big hitters, the penultimate track, Best in Show Pt. IV, is one of the strongest, and also the longest. Following up the first two parts on Street Worms and Welfare Jazz (there was no Pt. III), the five-minute freakout layers pseudo-spiritual storytelling and autotuned Eastern melodies over hand-clapping and bongos, before breaking into a hypnotic sax groove that only ends due to the band’s studio brevity. Played live, Viagra Boys could go all night.
Dan Meier
Viagr Aboys is released on 25th April 2025. For further information or to order the album visit Viagra Boys’ website here.
Watch the video for Uno II here:
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