Welfare Jazz - Viagra Boys: Review
are a Swedish post-punk outfit who first emerged in the mid 2010's with a series of EPs that led up to their debut album Street Worms in 2018. They released a series of critically acclaimed singles during the lead up to this, their sophomore album.
Review By Lav:
Even though I didn't totally love Viagra Boys debut album I saw a ton of unique potential and creativity in their work and was excited for what they would do next. That excitement only grew when the singles for this record started dropping and I enjoyed almost all of them. Once again I come away from this album satisfied with the record, but seeing room for improvement and excited for what the band will do next.
The lead single Ain't Nice also serves as the opening track making for a groovy post-punk tone setter to kick the record off. It pairs snarling lead vocals with a punchy fusion of hard rock and jazz with some hints of kooky synths mixed in. The song is a balls to the wall jam that wastes no time getting into the meat of the record. The next single Creatures really blew me away starting with the tight ass bassline and all around exciting instrumental. The songs metaphor deals in either people in poverty or people addicted to drugs I can't quite tell, but it compares them to creatures living at the bottom of the sea. The entire song is built around this metaphor and it carries perfectly alongside the great instrumental for an unequivocal highlight. The final single also turned out to be pretty good, Girls & Boys isn't a Blur cover but that honestly wouldn't have surprised me. It's a pointed societal critique that sees a disembodied voice calling out all kinds of stuff from girls/boys to dogs/shrimp while frontman Sebastian Murphy gives his thoughts on each. Ultimately he just decides to burn everything down which I think is a fitting sentiment, this track has grown on me a lot since I first heard it.
There are a few solid, or at the very least incredibly interesting tracks that make up the rest of the record. 6 Shooter is a mostly instrumental track with some sprinklings of vocal samples throughout but its just as rousing and intense as anything else here. It executes the same muddy blend of rock and jazz instrumentation and the band flies through 5 minutes with absolute ease. Toad kicks off with a long spoken word passage that almost feels like it has shades of Nick Cave. The instrumental feels like an angrier take on surf rock and the kind of hilarious lyrical theme dives into individual freedoms and likens that to the hopping of a toad. It is really something, at the very least the track isn't forgettable. Secret Canine Agent is yet another hilarious song that in under 2 minutes crafts a quite literal story about a secret agent who is a dog. The tight percussion and killer bassline keep the song pushing forward and the lyrics are laugh out loud funny.
Into The Sun is a bit more indulgent take on post-punk and I Feel Alive is a genuine piece of piano rock. Neither of the tracks really do much for me I think the vocal mixing takes away a lot of their impact particularly on Alive and neither of them have the same caliber of songwriting as the records best tracks. To The Country is a sort of love song that seems to idealize quiet domestic living. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense until you get to the closing track a cover of John Prine's In Spite Of Ourselves. This song was an interesting single to say the least but I'm just as confused by ut as the closer to the record here. They absolutely stick to the songs roots and deliver an absolutely country rendition of the track which is striking after the gritty post punk of the previous 40 minutes. The explicit detail of the relationship between the two vocalists is sometimes charming sometimes difficult but it still feels like the only way I can enjoy the track is as a novelty song.
This record had some really good singles that surprised me quite a bit, but just like the bands first album I'm pretty mixed on the deep cute. From lackluster songwriting to strange mixing and performance decisions not every risk the band takes succeeds. But on the other hand there are a number of great songs here with strikingly unique themes and fearless songwriting that I find exhilarating time and time again. Once again I'm going out of this record with a number of songs I really enjoy and the hopes that the group will put it all together and drop an all killer no filler record next. 6.5/10
Album Cover Review By Tyler Judson:
This cover is a jumbled mess but I'm oddly attracted to it. The handwritten words all compiled together makes you wonder in what order the words go in and what exactly the title is. That can be a hinderance too as when people read it not everyone will get the same idea and it could cause confusion. I love the sizing of and overlap some of the words hand as well as the color choices of the text. I don't think it has a tremendous amount of effort put in but it still gets the job done well. 6/10
For more post-punk check out my review of IDLES' Ultra Mono here
