Viagra Boys: “Ain’t Nice”

With the devastating tune “Ain’t Nice” and the delirious video that accompanies it, Stockholm post-punk band Viagra Boys announce their new album Welfare Jazz, which will be available January 8 via YEAR0001. The album is produced by Matt Sweeney (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Run the Jewels), Justin and Jeremiah Raisen (Yves Tumor, Kim Gordon, Sky Ferreira), and former collaborators Pelle Gunnerfeldt and Daniel Fagerström (The Hives, The Knife). As derisory as ever, the band members return to their saxophonic post-punk to deftly challenge society’s normalisation of toxic masculinity, racism, misogyny, classism and self-obsession. Singer Sebastian Murphy, who cultivated – with little difficulty – the image of a staggering drunk or drug addict in previous videos, is back in that role for the new one, “Ain’t Nice”, but this time making a mess along the way. Stealing scooters and jackets, disrupting picnics, Murphy leaves no innocent bystander unmolested, until a kid knocks him out. He then wakes up in a luxurious estate with all the “nicest” things, surrounded by servants wearing powdered wigs, all very 18th-century… Another absurd and deranged clip from Viagra Boys, making pleasant promises after the rather disappointing EP Common Sense, released last March.