Viagra Boys - Welfare Jazz

Pitchfork 72

Read Evan Rytlewski’s review of the album.

The Guardian 0

(Year 0001)
Expanding on their pulverising visions of lowlifes and inadequates, Viagra Boys’ second just about avoids caricature

The second Viagra Boys album begins where the Swedish post-punk quintet’s debut, 2018’s Street Worms, left off: a churning, fuzzy bassline, sputtering electronics, and Sebastian Murphy declaiming in blackly comic fashion about his inadequacies: “I ain’t nice!” The whole point of Viagra Boys has appeared to be that they aren’t nice: live, they are pulverisingly intense, and Murphy – heavily tattooed, and both skinny and pot-bellied – projects an air of disdainful menace. Beneath the apparent squalor of songs like Research Chemicals, though, there was always purpose: attacking hypocrisy, celebrating underdogs.