Reading Festival 2024: Viagra Boys on new music, influencing Kings of Leon and beef with The Hives
Viagra Boys have revealed to NME that they have a new album on the way, with its release expected “maybe next year”, according to frontman Sebastian Murphy.
The Swedish post-punk band met NME backstage at Reading Festival, with Murphy joined by the band’s bassist Henrik ‘Benke’ Höckert.
Viagra Boy’s previous album, 2022’s ‘Cave World’, saw them incorporate electronic elements into their sound, while its predecessor, 2021’s ‘Welfare Jazz’, bore a distinct country flavour. This time, explained Murphy, the band will include “a little bit of everything, hopefully”.
He added: “We’re gonna see where it ends up. I think there’s a little bit of all sorts of genres in there, hopefully – excluding maybe R&B and stuff like that.” With a laugh, he clarified: “There’s a lot of rock.”
When NME commented that it seems the Viagra Boys sound could go anywhere, Murphy replied: “Yeah, that’s kind of the vibe we want. We want people to not really expect what’s coming.
“And who knows? Maybe it does sound exactly like it has before, but in my head it doesn’t. Hopefully there are new sounds in there and we’ve definitely taken different approaches to songwriting.”
Höckert, describing the record, said: “It’s like the older stuff, but just a little bit better.”
In an interview earlier this year, Kings of Leon told NME that their latest recent album ‘Can We Please Have Fun’ was inspired by post-punk bands including Viagra Boys. Informed of this, Murphy exclaimed: “What! No way! That’s insane.”
Asked if Viagra Boys are KOL fans in return, Murphy replied: “I listened to them growing up a little bit. I mean, when I was 13, 14 – they were getting huge on radio and stuff like that. I didn’t know they were still making music.”
He added: “But that’s cool! That’s awesome. I can’t believe that, really. I wanna hear their new album and see if it sounds like Viagra Boys.” He then imitated his band’s signature guitar sound: “Der-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner!”
Last month, it was reported that Viagra Boys had engaged in a jokey online war of words with fellow Swedish band The Hives. On Instagram, the Hives dubbed Viagra Boys “punk rock losers”. In response, Murphy’s band shared a clip in which they called their supposed rivals “corporate suit rock”.
The joke was a means of publicising their appearances at Sthlm Fields Festival, which was held on July 6. In our interview, Murphy joked, “Fuck those guys!” before confirming: “I don’t wanna keep going – the beef is squashed!”
Conversely, ‘Cave World’ featured ‘Big Boy’, a collaboration with Sleaford Mods frontman Jason Williamson. Murphy told NME that Williamson is his “spirit animal – my British spirit animal”.
He added: “He’s very wise and I just look up to him a lot. I loved what he’s done with his music and his life, and I love how articulate he is and how angry he is. I just love the guy.”
Murphy teased ‘Cave World’ in a 2021 interview with NME, telling us that the band had recorded the album in “six days”. Now, though, he confessed this was untrue: “I must have been lying, trying to flex. Definitely not. There was a lot of back and forth, but everything changed substantially along the way. The whole process was probably over a year.”
Lana Del Rey is scheduled to release her country album, ‘Lasso’, next month, while Post Malone released his own country album, ‘F-1 Trillion’, on August 15. When NME pointed out to Viagra Boys that country music is having a moment and they were ahead of the curve with ‘Welfare Jazz’, Murphy replied: “Yeah, it is, right? That’s why we’re not doin’ it anymore!”
He then discussed his love of the genre, which was apparent in the band’s cover of John Prine’s ‘In Spite of Ourselves’, a collaboration with Amyl and the Sniffers’ Amy Taylor that appeared on ‘Welfare Jazz’.
“I’ve always been a huge country fan,” he said. “I listen to country every day. I wanted to incorporate it into our music before and then it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re kinda: ‘Been, there done that.’ We’ll see – it might come back [to us] someday.
‘Cave World’ saw Murphy inhabit the personas of right-wing conspiracists as he parodied theories about medication (“They’re putting little creepy crawlies in the vaccines!” he exclaimed on ‘Creepy Crawlers’). What, NME wondered, does that kind of method acting do to your psyche?
“I mean, it’s impossible to not be inhabited by it,” replied Murphy, “when it’s all over the place, everywhere. I don’t know – I think it makes you stronger to [face it]. Or more depressed? I dunno! We live in a wild, wild world and I think you should just take it as it is.”
After the interview, Viagra Boys went on to headline the Festival Republic Stage – perhaps an unlikely feat for a group with such an outlandish name.
When we put this to the band, Murphy joked: “We have a lot of older fans find out about us through strange Googling. That’s why there’s so many 65-year-old fans out there.”
Follow all of the action as it happens on the NME Reading & Leeds liveblog here.
Check back here for the latest news, reviews, photos, interview and more from Reading 2024.
The post Reading Festival 2024: Viagra Boys on new music, influencing Kings of Leon and beef with The Hives appeared first on NME.
Jordan Bassett
NME
