Viagra Boys explore tunnels of sardonic post-punk, blues rock and throwback synthesisers on third record ‘Cave World’
With a tongue-in-cheek examination of technology, conspiracy theories and toxic masculinity, the Swedish rockers bring brash fun to big topics.
Photo: Press
It’s easy to get lost in a genre-mire. Modern rock music has seen the rise of the playful: musicians faffing around with so many sounds that you hope the merging of every tattooed influence pays off. It’s no different for Swedish outfit Viagra Boys, who have toyed with post-punk, psychedelic jazz, spoken word, stoner rock and even country. Clearly they’ve emerged from their mire, or in this case a cave, with their third full length exhibiting a successful delve down many tunnels, going from strange to stranger.
At the entrance to the evocatively titled Cave World is a woven tapestry of various images. Like that blanket your nana stitched together for you when you were a child but with added crudeness and neon. There are some cowboy boots, the desert monolith from Kubrick’s space-based epic, a quasi-anatomical hieroglyph of a jackal, and a prawn in a fishbowl — one of Viagra Boys’ motifs. Random at face value, but actually an accurate representation of the album’s narrative. The intrigue only starts there as we descend into more cavernous wormholes.
Heavy synth-bass bloops welcome in Baby Criminal before a deluge of swaying basslines and twanging guitars take hold for some sort of freakish Saturday Night Fever. Vocalist Sebastian Murphy, with a signature whisky-drenched-raconteur-in-the-saloon-corner croon, tells the story of adorable little Jimmy who “spent his time in the kitchen, microwaving batteries / He even killed a squirrel and turned it into a hat / Oh, into a hat.” He used to be a baby, but now he’s bad. Part delusionally weird vignette, part comment on the loss of innocence, the seriousness defined by the listener. Cue saxophone solo!
Without a moment’s notice, the 80s Moog synthesiser on Cave Hole transports you to the past, when we were apes, à la 2001: A Space Odyssey. Single Troglodyte is a damning assessment of a keyboard warrior who “evolved a bit too late” through a bluesy rock jam. Punk Rock Loser, another single, allows the band to slow to a swaggering pace, talking about how they’re far cooler than your average punkers. In fairness, they have the bravado to prove it. Creepy Crawler sees Stranger Things-style background music playing while Seb channels the voices of vaccine conspiracy theorists before an aural assault ensues. Children being harvested, L. Ron Hubbard Scientology references — the whole shebang. The feeling of being sucked into a digital Charybdis.
While the layered vocals on The Cognitive Trade-Off Hypothesis take centre stage, again detailing the album’s theme of technological advancement bringing back primitive instincts, there’s also a Black Moth Super Rainbow instrumental going on, highlighting the band’s excelling keyboard work. Ain’t No Thief is the hardest hitting track — a stream-of-consciousness jive in a Mortal Kombat game where Seb and the gang take no prisoners, harassing the listener with chat about lighters and shrimps. The album’s latter stages explore toxic masculinity (Big Boy — which features a very welcome turn from Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson) and a hazy rave in ADD before we’re brought to prehistory one final time in the completely bombastic Return to Monke, featuring animalistic howls.
The record in short: why just have blues jams, or punk freakouts, when you can supplement them with nods to sci-fi movies? It works to an extremely dancy effect. Like one of those ‘try not to headbang!’ YouTube reaction videos, it’s impossible to not feel your hips and shoulders pulled along by the pulsating bass and tribal drums. Not only is it Viagra Boys’ most fun release, but it’s also the greatest show of their boundary-breaking creative chops, musically and thematically. Do a gorilla dance like nobody’s watching.
Cave World is out now on YEAR0001.