Welfare Jazz

Since their founding in 2015, Swedish post-punk band Viagra Boys have made a name for themselves burning up stages around the world. There's a little Iggy Pop spit and seethe, a David Yow drunken stumble, and a bite of Nick Cave's haunted bark. Add a dash of motorik groove, a pinch of post-punk grime, and a dose of no wave howl. Ever the band drenched in satire, they return with their brand of horn-filled, searing post-punk and rejection of standard genre trope's to deftly lay waste to society's normalization of toxic masculinity, racism, misogyny, classism, and self-obsession. Even the album's title has a layer of satirical depth; the transliteration from Swedish of the term used for the government's financial support of jazz musicians cuts to the quick of institutionalized classism and prioritization. The band's new album, Welfare Jazz, doesn't bargain with the anxiety in that defeated feeling, but rather a boiling certainty that nothing and no one is absolute. There's plenty of blame to go around, and things are just a lot more interesting when you admit that you're not always going to be nice, you're not always going to pick the right words in a fist-fight. So why not keep moving forward, swaying and strutting into the night.

Tracks

1~1~Ain't Nice
1~2~Cold Play
1~3~Toad
1~4~This Old Dog
1~5~Into The Sun
1~6~Creatures
1~7~6 Shooter
1~8~Best In Show Ii
1~9~Secret Canine Agent
1~10~I Feel Alive
1~11~Girls & Boys
1~12~To The Country
1~13~In Spite Of Ourselves

Details

Format: CD
Artist: Viagra Boys
Release Date: 08 January 2021
Genre: Alternative
Label: AWAL
Distributor: Inertia Music