by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
Once upon a time, the likes of Mac DeMarco, Homeshake, and Connan Mockasin were jokingly cited as making ‘jizz jazz,’ lightly psychedelic wannabe jazz. The name of Viagra Boys’ latest album, Welfare Jazz, sounds like a similarly silly term, this time to describe saxophone-infused aggressive post-punk made by a group of Swedes. Winking silliness is what Viagra Boys trade in though; it’s what made their debut, Street Worms, stand out in a packed field, and it’s what its follow-up is filled with too.
Led by an anti-hero frontman in Sebastian Murphy - heavily tattooed and proud, crass and crude but forever fascinating - he’s continuing in the vein of the abrasive Alan Vega on Welfare Jazz. His knowing self-deprecation is never on show more than during the opening song - and album highlight - “Ain’t Nice”: “I ain’t nice” is the simple but pointed choral refrain, Murphy wryly embracing his character.
Often, he sounds like a Scandivanian country crooner, longing for the wild plains and brawling bars of the Southern United States. On the faux-macho “Toad,” his voice warbles like a terrible Elvis impersonator (“Well, I don't need no woman tellin' me / When to go bed and when to brush my teeth / Girl, if you ain't my mama, please don't try to be / Yeah, you can't change this old hound dog”). He even closes the entire album with an ode to John Prine with a cover of “In Spite Of Ourselves”; he’s joined on the track by Amyl and the Sniffers’ Amy Taylor, who’s certainly getting around the punk block with her recent other duet with Sleaford Mods.
The listener is constantly toyed with throughout the album. Murphy may have mocked the idea of being tied down to someone, but later in “To the Country,” he conversely sounds sincerely hopeful to “get a house together somewhere on the country…And I know I don’t show it but I think that’s what I want now.” A song like “Creatures” is an ode to the criminal underclass (“We don’t need money, we trade in copper”) that treads the line between empathy and voyeurism.
With the wild live performers now castrated, their album does enough to capture the energetic essence of a Viagra Boys gig. The grubby and groovy tracks pulsate with synth and sax. The latter flutters chaotically through tracks like the thrilling “Girls & Boys” and the instrumental piece “6 Shooter”. “I Feel Alive” lives up to its name with a pounding and propulsive rhythm. The Stockholm band’s music must always be taken with a pinch of salt and, luckily, the chaotic, ecstatic, and lurid Welfare Jazz manages to be sleazy and provocative without descending into full caricature.