Shrimp-loving Swedish post-punks Viagra Boys landed stateside this week to kick off their Infinite Anxiety U.S. tour with an appearance on The Daily Show. They performed “Pyramid of Health” from their self-titled-ish new album, viagr aboys, and frontman Sebastian Murphy sat for an interview with part-time host and longtime correspondent Jordan Klepper.
Starting the performance in VHS-quality video with a lone, buzzy grunge guitar riff, Murphy straddled the mic as he delivered one of the cooler opening lines in recent memory, “With a camera down my throat / They say my stomach’s nearly fried from eating cigarettes for breakfast.” Then again, this is the same guy who also wrote, “F–ing crypto is bad for your health / I’m touching myself by the health food shelf,” so maybe the bar should be a little higher.
Beyond Murphy’s aggressively absurd lyrics and desperate howling, Viagra Boys found their power in raw simplicity, accented by the occasional synth swell before dissolving back into that same fuzzed-out guitar. In his interview, Murphy said the song is about “Pseudo health bullshit. Burning Man, all that crap.”
Prior to the performance, Murphy shed light on a few things for host and admitted Viagra Boys fan, Jordan Klepper. For starters, the band’s new, fourth studio album was intended as a self-titled LP, but in order to make the cover art symmetrical, the band’s name got chopped into viagr aboys. After Klepper got Murphy to explain and pronounce the title, he ultimately relented, “I don’t like it anymore, actually.” The singer also explained the genesis of the band’s rather memorable name.
“When we started the band, we were pretty f–ked up people at the time,” Murphy explained, adding, “And you know, now I got my s–t together. But back then, we were on a lot of stimulants and stuff like that, and the actual use of Viagra was a necessity. Which is weird, it’s different, for most people they’re young and everything works. And then they get old, and it doesn’t. For me, I was young, and nothing worked. And then I grew up, and look at me now.”
Murphy also confirmed that the band was born when bassist Henrik “Benke” Hockert saw Murphy sing Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” at a karaoke bar in Sweden. After seeing Murphy’s Mariah Caraoke, Benke, naturally, asked Seb, “You wanna start a punk band or what?”
Raised in San Rafael, CA, by a Swedish mother and American father, Murphy is fluent in both languages and moved to Stockholm at the age of 17. The singer brings a dual citizen’s perspective to the group, the remainder of which consists of native-born Swedes. When Klepper asked Murphy what it was like coming back to the U.S. for this tour, Seb replied simply, “It’s scary.” Given the current geopolitical climate, Viagra Boys considered canceling the tour altogether like some other foreign groups.
“That was a conversation, for sure,” Murphy said. “But at the same time, I kind of feel like our fans deserve to hear resistance music as well. And I feel like I come here to play for like-minded people, hopefully. Not everyone has to think exactly like me. … Because the people that go to our shows, for the most part, they aren’t the ones snatching people up off the streets.”
Klepper also dug into Murphy’s lyrics, which often confront topics like hyper-masculinity through an absurdist lens. Talking about these themes of male dysfunction—not the kind that inspired the band’s name—Murphy relented, “I am a dysfunctional male. … It is satire, but at the same time, that’s how you change as well, is admitting to your own faults and doing some investigative journalism into your own soul.”
As far as what message Murphy said he’s trying to send out to the world with his music, he summed it up, “Be yourself. Be whoever you want to be. Freaks are welcome.”
Check out the full interview with Sebastian Murphy and Viagra Boys’ performance of “Pyramid of Health” on The Daily Show. Viagra Boys’ U.S. tour begins tonight, September 25th, with a sold-out show in Brooklyn and will go coast-to-coast through early November. Find tickets and tour dates here and on the band’s website. viagr aboys is out now across streaming services.
Viagra Boys — “Pyramid Of Health” — Live
Sebastian Murphy — Fronting Viagra Boys & Modern Resistance Music | The Daily Show