Sebastian Murphy and his Viagra Boys made their Avicii Arena debut.” sizes=”(min-width: 1300px) 662px, (min-width: 1180px) 50vw, (min-width: 768px) 65vw, 100vw” loading=”eager” fetchpriority=”high” src=”aspect-ratio:1900 / 1267″/>CONCERT The first Globen gig for Viagra Boys naturally results in another thunderous victory for the simultaneously loose, furious and redeemingly smart rock.
Viagra Boys
Place: Avicii Arena, Stockholm. Public: 8 000. Length: 103 minutes. Best: Brutally strong ending to the regular set with “Sports” and a long, jammy “Research chemicals”. Worst: May possibly become the old boring standard objection “a little bad sound at the beginning”.
We live in a pop world where a lot of people run in the same direction and try to clone and copy the most popular sound and eccentrics of the time and bombard social media with the kind of content that applies this week in order to hopefully tease different algorithms and quickly build an audience.
You can also do as Viagra Boys and come up with something of your own that you are really passionate about and commit to doing just that as consistently and well as possible.
It may take a little longer, but is probably much more fun and probably feels much better in the soul.
In the nearly ten years that the Stockholm band has existed, they have never stopped being tattooed suburban dudes who mix punk rock, post-punk, kraut, blues, dub, disco, effective pop melodies and apt spoken word-like lyrics about the absurdity of the modern world. They may have refined their formula somewhat over the four albums they managed to release but never compromised or held up even the hint of a damp finger in the air.
Nevertheless, they are now one of this country’s most internationally respected and successful bands. And tonight they play their first own gig in the Avicii Arena.
All respect and hats off to it. This is how you create something of your own rock that could be called art.
The first time I saw them live was at a club under a bridge two tube stations away, a much more natural habitat for this kind of Stooges-rooted cacophony. But it doesn’t take very many seconds into the opening number “Man made of meat” before I notice that Sebastian Murphy and his loose followers have of course cracked the code for how their particular expression can work excellently even in an arena.
The stage has been pushed forward a bit so they don’t fill the whole hall but it is still deeply gratifying that as many as 8,000 people came to see something like this.
– Damn, how great it is to be able to play at the Globe, says Murphy.
– We didn’t think so when we were three punks and a dude from Falun who was going to play some anti-music.
The gig is also dedicated Benjamin Vallethe band’s original guitarist who passed away four years ago.
And of course Viagra Boys conquer the Globe just by being Viagra Boys. No pyro, no expensive effects, no small stage out in the audience, just six freaks (to use Murphy’s own words), in front of a wide black and white monitor and a bloody clearing.
The tour “Infinite anxiety tour” has been rolling since last spring and the set seems to be so deep in the muscle memory that it basically plays itself, the band can just go along.
Benke Höckerts deep bass passages are, as usual, the merciless foundation and Murphy – shirtless, at the end in stockings – the as improbable as it is self-evident middle ground. But the fact that the motley collection Viagra Boys feels so much like a band is what really makes it.
All color such as the two shorts men, the saxophonist Oscar Carls and the keyboardist Elias Jungqvistturn on this sound is evident, not only when they both throw themselves into the crowd and in wild solos during a long, free version of early number “Research chemicals”.
It creates such sparks that the audience even forgets to film with their phones and forms abundant moshpits instead.
Murphy, on the other hand, is lovable when he plays a little off Jonathan Richmans ”Roadrunner” i ”Slow learner”, bjuder in Shitkid for a duet in “Punk rock loser”, smoldering fascism gives a lick in “Troglodyte” and the evening in honor sings the piano ballad “River king” for his girl.
Take Danielsson once said: “I’m so tired of this talk about giving people what they want. Getting people to want what you want to give yourself, that’s the trick!”
Few master said trick better than the Viagra Boys. This wonderfully raucous, breakneck fun, lucid life rock’n’roll overdrive just serves as yet another compelling proof of that.
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