Viagra Boys - viagr aboys 

For the majority of Viagra Boys’ existing audience, the main purpose of this fourth album is likely as fuel to further the outfit’s cult live presence, the Swedes having left a trail of angsty moshpit-inducing fervour across the globe for a decade now. Yet ‘viagr aboys’ makes like a metaphorical onion left in the fridge for a little too long; its provenance questionable, it’s not something most would want to touch with their bare hands but is - get to the point! - nevertheless layered. 

Opener ‘Man Made Of Meat’ causes a casual jolt, its proto-punk sound clashing with a casual (and unpredictably crude) reference to the death of Matthew Perry, showing that no, this is not a 1970s crate-digging exercise. ‘Dirty Boyz’, meanwhile, veers towards an indie sleaze sketch track (think an artist’s impression of LCD Soundsystem, or a Primal Scream tribute if the only source material is ’Screamadelica’). As such, ‘viagr aboys’ begins to resemble a spiritual sibling to the film producer Liam Lynch’s infamous noughties cut ‘Fake Songs’, in place of direct continuation of the band’s tried-and-tested post-punk.  

As with the aforementioned album - which gave us brief dancefloor filler ‘United States of Whatever’ - what the band have described as incorporating “a little bit of everything” into their songwriting has landed them on a sweet spot between impression, parody, and deference: ‘6’ broods like The National, while ‘Story Policy’ fizzles like an IDLES number (if Sebastian Murphy’s chest-beating intonation is at all unintentional across his many repetitions of the titular “policy”, its resemblance to Joe Talbot’s is uncanny). Elsewhere, the hypnotic synth line and cacophonous build of ‘You N33d Me’ again brings to mind early LCD Soundsystem; and looser, but still notable, the closing croon of ‘11’ suggests Elvis Costello. Naturally, one would not expect a band whose breakthrough consisted of a list of physical activities spouted over rumbling post-punk to view ‘switching things up’ in an academic way, but the – whisper it – whimsy that runs through ‘viagr aboys’ is plenty to widen audiences’ expectations of the group.