Welfare Jazz. Viagra Boys

A tough sounding name but also one that will make you be blocked by all spamfilters in the world. Swedish band Viagra Boys let not itself be deterred by a nuisance like that and went ahead, at full speed I might add. This resulted in a fine and tough album called Welfare Jazz. Not that this band has anything to do with jazz in whatever form known to the multiverse and yet the album does deserve the name; a little.

With this album Viagra Boys created a fine hybrid of Swedish alternative/garage rock as played in the past by The Hives and The Plan, to name two great proponents from Sweden in this category, the alternative 2018 postpunk Irish/U.K. scene and, yes, jazz, because of the way the saxophone honks itself through the songs on Welfare Jazz. All together it is a mix that allows for joyful singing and shouting and dancing.

Viagra Boys started in Stockholm in 2015 and releases its second full length album after 'Street Worms' from 2018 and an EP in between called 'Common Sense'. As I'm not familiar with the previous releases I'm not able to judge on progress or stagnation in the development of the band. The latter would be a major surprise going on the energy the band managed to capture on record. If the maxim that records can't half capture a live show goes in the case of Viagra Boys, then a live show must be near devastatingly exhausting. The spoken word sequences between songs, are they familiar with the former Dutch punkrock band Hausmagger?, may be there for everyone to catch their breaths.

Welfare Jazz is a dirty record. Where most bands try to capture everything as clear as possible, Viagra Boys don't mind to record as if the band is the back of a large factory hall and the mikes on the other end. Singer Sebastian Murphy's voice sounds like coming from the other end of a bad connection from the 70s, from before the Internet. It all adds to the atmosphere on the album, which certainly is fully its own. That is exactly why I will pull 'The Plan' out for the first time in years and give it a spin in my cd player soon.

The fact that Welfare Jazz shows some different sides of Viagra Boys as well, adds to the attraction of the album. A near instrumental outing, can go back to back with a more electronic based song or an alternatively rocking pop song. It makes the album far from one dimensional, as I tended to expect with a name like Viagra Boys. It's not and it makes the album more than just good. It's great fun as well and yes, sleazy in all the right ways.

A little after note. The album ends with the song 'In Spite Of Ourselves'. A second cover version of the John Prine song that reached me in a few months time, after the delightful version of Geoff Palmer and Lucy Ellis. Totally correct to give the song a new leash on life.

Wo.

Listen to our Spotify Playlist to find out what we are writing about:

https://open.spotify.com/user/glazu53/playlist/6R9FgPd2btrMuMaIrYeCh6?si=KI6LzLaAS5K-wsez5oSO2g