Viagra Boys - Girls & Boys

These are a post punk band from Stockholm, Sweden who cross many genres and influences. I've been regularly playing the new album since it came out a couple of weeks back. It is one of those that is probably listened start to finish. It is hard to know what is serious and what is not but it has satirical post-punk bangers with a ‘yeehaw!’ spirit. If most of these songs were indeed intended as a half-joke, they make it clear it’s not directed at the outside world any more than themselves.

“We wrote these songs at a time when I had been in a long-term relationship, taking drugs every day, and being an asshole,” Viagra Boys’ American-born frontman Sebastian Murphy explains of the band’s upcoming album, Welfare Jazz. “I didn’t really realise what an asshole I was until it was too late, and a lot of the record has to do with coming to terms with the fact that I’d set the wrong goals for myself.”

I am going with the absurdist death-disco alternative dancefloor filler Girls & Boys which takes us on a surreal, saxophone-smattered tour of outdated gender roles. It is a self-aware throwback to their party days with some Nick Cave / The Birthday Party-style burst of dissonance thrown in. It accentuates the agony behind its oddly danceable melodies.