Saxophone, beer bellies and bass: why Viagra Boys is one of the world’s best live bands
This Swedish post-punk sextet undersells itself as ‘a scientifically proven blend of sweat, saxophone and suspicious eye contact’, and it’s become one of the world’s best live bands.
In few other places will you find the English lexicon so warped and abused than in music publicity materials. In these funhouse mirrors, every new song represents something great and vital. Every new album is a gargantuan leap forward for humankind. Every band constantly produces its best work, and if you haven’t heard it yet, what the hell is wrong with you?
In this graveyard of oft-unearned plaudits, it’s refreshing to occasionally find a collection of words so arresting because they take the lower road: rather than talking up the artist at hand, they purposely talk them down.
This is how Swedish rock band Viagra Boys choose to describe themselves a live proposition: “Zero nutritional value. A scientifically proven blend of sweat, saxophone, and suspicious eye contact. Side-effects may include shouting, enlightenment and mild confusion that lasts several weeks.”
If nothing else, you’re at least a little curious now, aren’t you? Maybe not enough to buy a ticket, sight unseen (or sound unheard) – but when an artist isn’t trying to close every potential sale and instead shrugs at what it has to offer the marketplace, such a pose suggests a deeper self-confidence than your average press release seeking to stun an audience into submission through superlatives.
It helps, too, that Viagra Boys are easily one of the best live bands today. Which may be part of why the Stockholm sextet – in the above quote, snipped from their website from a post on April 22 – don’t feel the need to add any extra mayo to their sandwich.
When the band toured Australia late last year, this writer walked into the Brisbane show – a packed-to-the-gills Tivoli theatre heaving with wild-eyed punters – as a naif, and walked out a convert. In my post-show debrief, I signed off with this note to self: “I’d see them again tonight if I could.”
What’s on show at a Viagra Boys concert is a rock-solid party band that’s tight where it matters, primarily in the bass and drums, and loose everywhere else: the guitarist, synth player, saxophonist and singer Sebastian Murphy, whose tattooed beer belly is proudly displayed atop Adidas trackpants.
Murphy alone is US-born among his Swedish bandmates; his louche, world-weary demeanour suggests he might have been roused from a deep sleep moments before being pushed on stage, yet in this sunglasses-wearing loose unit of a frontman, the crowd has a shambolic focal point through 90 minutes skirting post-punk shot through with blasts of discordant brass.
Zero nutritional value? On paper, perhaps, but reading about this band doesn’t do it justice – and if I’d read too much before seeing Viagra Boys in action, I’d have lost the all-important discovery aspect of finding a powerful, fully formed band out there in the wild; a rare experience to be treasured.
If you must, call up YouTube for a dose of their live presentation. A song called Research Chemicals, played at the 2023 Glastonbury Festival, is a good start: a 10-minute odyssey driven by a monstrous mongrel of a bassline and backed by a dancefloor drumbeat that makes it impossible to stand still.
The six musicians look like characters from different sitcoms, yet their combined chemistry has thousands of Glasto punters having the time of their lives in full daylight, long before any of the headliners are line-checking their multimillion-dollar stage productions.
Sometimes all it takes to win over a crowd is unique bombast and unselfconscious bravado paired with great songwriting, which is what Viagra Boys offer in spades. Research Chemicals is the first track from their 2016 debut EP, Consistency of Energy. A gripping ode to self-experimentation with “psychedelic amphetamine”, it contains this memorable Murphy couplet, written from experience: “It ain’t like other shit, it’s 20 times as strong / You’ll know it’s working when everything feels wrong.”
Even today, it’s a reliable set closer, as Henrik Hockert – he of the monstrous mongrel bassline – tells The Australian on a tour bus in the Netherlands last week. “We usually end up with Research Chemicals,” he says, with a knowing laugh. “We always win them over after we play that song.”
Hockert, 45, is the oldest member and de facto leader: early on, he took the managerial and logistical lead, until handing those tasks to others as the band’s international profile has grown in recent years, thanks to major festival appearances and a US tour supporting Queens of the Stone Age in 2023.
Ahead of a return to Australia set for January, Hockert accepts my praise for Viagra Boys’ recent visit, and responds with humility when asked about their evident strength in the live arena.
“I guess people say that, but it’s hard for me to stand on a stage and think I’m really good, you know?” he says with a laugh. “I can’t really do that. I just try to do whatever you do, to be a part of the groove, or whatever. We have Sebastian; you never know what he’s gonna do. Same with Oskar (Carls, saxophone) a little bit, and that’s not so common, maybe in these days, in the music scene. I think that’s a very good thing.”
They recently released their fourth album, titled Viagr Aboys, earning a four-star review in The Australian. A scroll through their touring history shows rising demand and a clear ascent from clubs into theatres; in November, they will play the 16,000-capacity Avicii Arena in their home town of Stockholm.
“It’s weird that you’re becoming bigger and bigger, but I guess you get used to it,” says Hockert with a shrug. “Now, when we put out new albums and we tour in Europe, there’s more people that sing along than ever, but that’s great. It’s so much fun; we can give and take energy, together with the audience. It’s the best thing ever, but it’s weird as well: you think you played big rooms five years ago, and then you go back there, and feel like, ‘Oh, this is small!’.”
As for his undeniable role in the band’s powerhouse live show, Hockert clearly isn’t one to talk himself up, just like the understated self-description at the start of this article. Asked how he manages to stay locked into the relentless, machinelike rhythm of Research Chemicals for 10 minutes straight, his response is pragmatic.
“Just hit the strings and focus on the groove; try to feel the groove in your whole body,” says the bassist, who is unbothered by the growing size of their crowds, including the large mob that greeted them at Coachella in the US last month. “I think it just makes it more fun,” he says with another shrug. “As long as people don’t stand with their arms crossed, watching it like, ‘What the f..k are you doing?’.” As if such a thing were possible at a Viagra Boys show.
The news album, titled Viagr Aboys, is out now via Shrimptech Enterprises. Viagra Boys’ five-date Australian tour will begin in Brisbane (Jan 17) and end in Fremantle (Jan 23). Tickets: frontiertouring.com/vboys
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