Punk rockers Viagra Boys mix bizarro humour, nihilism and empathy
Since forming in 2015, Viagra Boys have excelled at blending brutalist post-punk with gauche, tongue-in-cheek political satire
On his critically acclaimed Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave, American comedian Tim Robinson specialises in lampooning a very particular brand of insecure, overcompensating manhood. His sketches are full of men whose inability to fit into a changing world leads to outbursts of impotent rage, self-loathing manifesting as deeply embarrassing misanthropy. These are men who mistake Wikipedia factoids for actual knowledge, who ruin parties and funerals with their misguided self-righteousness, whose refusal to admit their own ignorance leads them down increasingly dark and absurd rabbit holes.
So exactly the sort of men that populate Viagr Aboys, the absurd, hilarious and occasionally grotesque fourth album by Swedish post-punk group Viagra Boys. Since forming in 2015, the sextet—helmed by slouching, beer-bellied American transplant Sebastian Murphy—have excelled at blending brutalist post-punk with gauche, tongue-in-cheek political satire. Their 2018 debut album Street Worms was a brutally effective putdown of hypermasculinity and Sweden’s rising far-right, while 2022’s Cave World was steeped in commentary about gun violence, conspiracy theories and online right-wing cults.
On their latest record, the band dials back the political grandstanding. There are still plenty of critiques of, say, late capitalism and wellness culture, but they are embedded within ridiculously funny character sketches of the 21st-century manchild, soundtracked by deliciously off-kilter amalgamations of punk rock, electro, funk and free-jazz. The absurdist humour and over-the-top sleaze are what catch your attention first, but what really elevates these songs is a surprising undercurrent of tenderness. Murphy may not agree with the deeply flawed characters he portrays, but he refuses to turn them into one-dimensional caricatures, instead plumbing their emotional depths with real sensitivity.
Punk-funk opener Man Made Of Meat’s lines about “subscribing to your Mom’s OnlyFans" and “chat[ting] with her on the AI chat program" are laugh-out-loud funny, but the misanthropy of its refrain (“I hate almost everything that I see/ And I just wanna disappear") is heartfelt and authentic. On the surface, the sludgy and manic Bog Body is a deeply unserious song about a Neolithic corpse so well-preserved that it makes your girlfriend jealous, but it’s animated by very real anxieties about mortality and being forgotten.
Uno II, written from the perspective of Murphy’s aging dog who had to get all his teeth taken out, is a sprechgesang-punk exploration of the conspiratorial thinking and lack of institutional trust that leads to the anti-vaccine movement. The same theme pops up on album highlight Pyramid of Health, a scuzzy alt-psychedelic track that invokes the slacker nihilism of 90s grunge—including a fairly obvious nod to Marcy Playground’s breakthrough 1997 hit Sex And Candy. But here, instead of “hangin ‘round downtown" the protagonist is in a doctor’s office, with a camera down his throat. This health scare sparks off a descent into a wormhole of desert mysticism, Instagram health cults and psychedelic ‘healing’, the character spiralling out in an effort to regain some control over his body and mortality.
Murphy’s incisive, razor-sharp lyrics are accompanied by some of the band’s most thrilling and eclectic compositions—rattling, relentless, teetering on the edge of collapse but never quite tipping over. Store Policy’s ominous bass and shrieking saxophone perfectly capture the nightmarish tension of being kicked out for “touching myself by the health food shelf". The grimy disco-punk of bad-boy anthem Dirty Boyz is genuinely sexy in a knowingly louche way, while the ludicrous fever-dream of Best In Show pt. IV is soundtracked by breathtaking jazz-punk that would fit neatly onto a The Birthday Party b-sides collection. Soaring above this freewheeling noise is Murphy’s husky baritone, moving between Sleaford Mods-esque sing-speak, alt-rock croon and even old-school country as he alternates between punk-rock prophet and self-debasing standup comic.
There’s only two songs on Viagr Aboys that vary significantly from the band’s formula of crunchy guitar riffs, bodacious synths and freakish humour. The first is Medicine For Horses, whose aqueous keys and indie-rock vocals invoke the Pixies at their most morose (lyrics like “Take the fluid from my spine/ Put it in a mason jar and give it to a child" also bring to mind the body-horror vulnerability of Kurt Cobain.)
The other is album closer River King, a disarmingly sincere love ballad. After spending a whole record riffing on fetishised misanthropy, corporal violence and the horrors of contemporary life, Murphy finds himself singing wistfully about getting bad Chinese food over painfully sad piano. “Lookin' at you/ Everything feels easy now," he croons, suggesting that the antidote to all the insanity that Viagr Aboys documents lies in the simple charms of love and companionship. It’s as vulnerable as the band has ever been, underscoring the fact that for all the bizarro humour and shock-jock nihilism, Viagra Boys’ real strength lies in their understanding of—and empathy for—the human condition. As Murphy told the Guardian in response to a question about whether they’re finally going soft, “we’ve always been soft. That’s been the problem all along."
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