Viagra Boys – Welfare Jazz
Let’s start with track one to get you locked in.
From the very first listen I was hooked and yet the name of the band threw me off so much I thought that I was being punked.This album is just gritty. Try not to bop your head on the very first beat. This Swedish band has won me over. Bizarre and bluesy, this album will have you rolling your windows down in the winter. Screaming horns, almost like Morphine on amphetamines. Morphine put out one of my all time favorite albums, Cure For Pain. This video is my go to Morphine song.
Welfare Jazz blows you away with the western aggressiveness of the song “Cold Play” that has elements of a feisty Orville Peck track. The swirling madness of “6 Shooter” would work well on a Mad Max soundtrack. “To the Country” sounds like a Presidents of the United States cover. But, it just might be the line from POTUS’ “Peaches”,
“I’m Movin’ to the country
Gonna eat a lot of peaches”
That song is so catchy you should check it out.
The beautiful ending of the album is a cover of John Prine’s “In Spite of Ourselves”; a duet with the Amyl and the Sniffers, Amy Taylor. It ranks as my favorite cover of this song.
Last year I featured a couple of records that were just chaos. Since 2020 was plain old chaos. Viagra Boys record is my 2021 chaos record. End this reading with the jam, “6 Shooter”.