Sebastian Murphy, lead singer and songwriter for Swedish post-punk giants Viagra Boys, said their latest album, Viagr Aboys, was an exploration of real life meeting high art and that the album is admittedly “a bit simple and stupid,” because he and his bandmates were exhausted by world politics and wanted to create something fun. Even the album art is goofy, as Murphy wanted the band’s name to be symmetrical on the cover and it ended up split in half.
Is life art or is art life? That’s the overall theme of the album. “Man Made of Meat” gets the album off to a fun start with call-and-response vocals about Internet culture and how it turns people into constant consumers and promoters (“I hope they see me in the drive-thru lane!” / “I don’t want to pay for anything. Clothes and food and drugs for free. If it was 1970, I’d have a job in a factory.” / “I’ve subscribed to your mom’s Only Fans.”). “The Bog Body” is based on a real museum exhibit of exhumed, preservered bodies found in bogs that Murphy’s girlfriend became somewhat obsessed with, which Murphy found fascinating. Again, life is art, and the reactions to it, often pompous ones, can be humorous (“Do you even know the difference between a swamp and an ancient bog?”).
“Uno II” is a goofy tale about Murphy’s dog and the constant veterinarian bills she produces. Elias Jungqvist’s synthesizers and Oskar Carls’ flute turn the story into a somewhat dreamy tune. “Pyramid of Health” has Murphy facing how his partying life is affecting his body and all the weird advice he’s received to fix it. “Dirty Boyz” is another witty takedown of bro-culture with killer beats from Tor Sjödén.
“Medicine for Horses” could be about ketamine, but it’s really about wanting to do something significant before one’s death and being remembered afterwards. Carls’ saxophone is as lonely as Murphy’s voice. “Waterboy” references dancing, singing raisins and aimlessly wandering through life without purpose (“Livin’ like this, you won’t live long.”). “Store Policy” is so angry and rough that it’s probably based on a true story that happened to Murphy. Henrik Höckert’s bass is, as always, thick and crushing. The grooves he creates are often jaw-dropping. The whole band hits hard on it. Carls’ flute notes stab at you, Linus Hillborg’s guitar sounds like a bandsaw breaking down, Jungqvist’s synths throb like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk, Sjödén’s beats go full-cyborg, and Murphy snarls and growls the whole time.
“You N33d Me” gets you dancing (again, that bass by Höckert!) and is another spin on how many people have gleefully allowed their lives to become art / products to be consumed by others. “Best in Show Pt. IV” (another one about life being displayed as an exhibition) is the longest track on the album as Murphy seems to be speaking stream-of-consciousness lyrics about weird trips and how he’s losing his mind (“I need access to heaven, or ain’t none of this is gonna work out.”). “River King” is just Murphy’s voice, Jungqvist’s piano, and Carls’ saxophone spinning a tale of Murphy’s desire for a lost relationship.
You get four extra tracks if you pick up the Japanese deluxe edition of Viagr Aboys: “Therapy II” (a bit of a riff “The Bog Body” grooves with a definite Devo influence), “Middleage(d) Humanoid” (with Höckert’s bass as heavy as Thor’s hammer), “Watching You” (a cool showcase of Jungqvist’s skills and Sjödén’s programmed beats), and “Cumboy” (in which Hillborg demonstrates that he can play shoegaze anytime he wants).
Yes, art is life and life is art. There’s more to it than politics, Internet clicks, maxing, and fleeting fame. Viagra Boys have been reminding us about this (and warning us of the embrace of toxicity) for years, and Viagr Aboys is another important message from them.
And it’s silly, which is much needed in today’s world.
L-R: Yours truly, Julian Ruiz, Joey Cook, Ryan Fuson
Three of the psych-rocker lads from Holy Wave, Julian Ruiz (drums), Joey Cook (guitar), and Kyle Hager (keyboards, guitars, vocals) were kind enough to sit down with me outside the Far Out Lounge at this year’s Austin Psych Fest not long after their as-usual fine set Friday night. We talked about their latest album, Five of Cups, working with Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, horror movies, ramen, and lyrics changing on the fly.
7th Level Music: Good set as always. Every time I’ve seen you guys, it just kills. The Studio 22 and B-Sides album just came out, which is great. Thanks for putting that out there. What are you working on now?
Julian Ruiz: That was about fifty percent new songs [during our set].
Joey Cook: We’ve got a new record coming out July 10th (i’mDADA).
Kyle Hager: Did you say you DJ at Notre Dame?
7LM: Yeah, I’ve been DJing there for twenty-plus years.
JC: I think that might have been the first we heard of us [being played] on college radio. [Would that have bee] when Relax came out (2014)?
7LM: Yes, since Relax.
JC: Yeah, we got an e-mail saying, “You guys are on this radio station,” and we were like, “What? There’s somebody at a college radio station playing us?”
7LM: Speaking of Relax, I’m a horror movie geek, so whose idea was it to put Nosferatu on the cover?
JR: That’s the one guy who’s not here (lead singer Ryan Fuson).
JC: Me and Andy (Julian) came up with the album title.
KH: That (image) was the counter to “relax,” I guess.
7LM: Was there any word about Frankie Goes to Hollywood jokes?
JC: That what it came from. We were playing a show at (downtown Austin venue) Cheer Up Charlies and I would see that [Frankie Goes to Hollywood] shirt that would just say “Relax” on it.
JR: I love those shirts.
JC: I thought, “We should call the album Relax.”
KH: It’s a good fuckin’ message though.
7LM: It is. You know, I was going to bring that up. Jumping ahead, the messages on Five of Cups are even more relevant now…Trying to stay positive in this environment.
KH: Yeah, it’s…it’s been a decade so far.
7LM: That’s a good way to put it…It’s been a decade for sure.
KH: We’re probably closer to what people experienced in the Forties or Sixties, at least in my lifetime.
JC: We thought Interloper was the sad state of affairs record, and we had no idea what was coming.
KH: We didn’t know how sad it was going to get. We recorded it in 2019 and put it out in July 2020. It was right after the pandemic, we released a new record and were like, “Fuck…”
JC: And we had momentum. We were touring a shit-ton, and we were just on our game and then it was like, “Okay…”
7LM: Was working with Lorelle Meets the Obsolete [on Five of Cups] something you’d tried to do for a while and it finally worked out?
JC: Yeah, we meant to record at their place in Ensenada (Mexico) in 2021 and I was working here at a food truck and I broke my finger and had to have surgery on it. We had all planned this trip to go record there and I had to not go because I had to have the surgery, but we finally made it out there last year and did a record with them.
KH: The new record has them on several tracks. Lorena (Quintanilla) sings one of the songs on it again (as she does on Five of Cups’ “The Darkest Timeline”).
7LM: Are there any other bands you’re hoping to work with?
JC: The guy who produced the new record is Joo Joo Ashworth. He played in a band called Froth.
JR: He produced and engineered the whole thing.
JC: We’ve been friends with him for a long time and always wanted to collaborate with him. We’ve always loved Froth and everything he touches. He was, even more than Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, more of a collaborator on the record. The tone of it, and stuff like that.
JR: It was a culmination of a plan we’d been trying to do for so long.
JC: It was such a bummer when I broke my finger. My doctor said, “You’re never playing guitar again.” He did a great job, though. I barely play now.
7LM: Are you doing any more touring soon?
JC: Yeah, this fall we’ll be doing tours. East coast, Europe, then west coast in the fall.
JR: We’ll be in Chicago [at the Empty Bottle] August 13th.
7LM: This is something I ask every band I interview: Do you have any favorite misheard versions of your song lyrics?
JC: We make our own versions.
KH: Ryan also changes the lyrics.
JC: He doesn’t remember his lyrics.
JR: Ryan always keeps everyone on their toes.
JC: We create alternate versions every single night.
KH: I don’t even remember what the chorus of “Western Playland” (from Freaks of Nuture) is, but I know that Ryan sings the way the Brazilian guys sing it. When we were in São Paulo, he was like, “Oh, that’s better.” He just sings what they came up with.
7LM: I asked Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers that, and he told me he loves when that happens because it means the song takes on a whole new meaning for each listener.
JR: Yeah, for sure, and I’m glad they’re listening to the lyrics.
7LM: Is there a way you choose who sings what? Kyle, is there a time when Ryan says, “You know what, you should sing this.” or vice-versa?
KH: Me and Ryan bring ideas to the table, but also, especially when Julian writes a song sometimes he already has a vocal idea and he sings it, but a lot of times either me or Ryan will gravitate towards singing.
JR: They’re the main singers, so when we have ideas we go to them.
KH: If one of us says, “Hey, I’ve got a vocal idea for this,” then we’ll start running with it.
JC: We would rather them sing.
KH: It happens pretty organically. It’s not like, “I’m singin’ this one!” It’s like, “I’ve got a cool idea. What do you guys think?”
JC: What instrument you play on the song is determined by who shows up first. Everyone wants to play the bass line first.
JR: I think Ryan really wants to be the drummer.
KH: We don’t switch [instruments] as much on stage much anymore. Half of the stuff that I’m playing, even from the old stuff, but especially from the new stuff, that’s not what I wrote on the song. The guitar parts on the new songs, its half stuff I wrote on guitar, half stuff somebody else wrote on guitar, plus what somebody else wrote on keyboard a little bit.
JC: Sometimes you have to hear your part being played by something or someone else. We have backing tracks with three of us playing guitar on the same song, and none of the keyboards get to be played, so you think, “Oh, there’s my keyboard part.”
7LM: You guys have so many psychedelic influences, but are there other outside ones? There are some songs where I think, “That’s almost a metal riff.” or there was some stuff you were putting down, Julian, that made me think, “That’s almost like krautrock.”
JR: Oh yeah.
JC: I think we’re all super into that krautrock stuff.
KH: Growing up in El Paso, everything was heavy music. That was the scene we all came up in. We all started off playing in hardcore and hardcore-adjacent bands.
[At this point, Alex Maas of The Black Angels stopped by to say hello, and, “I wasn’t able to see your set, but I heard several people said they laid down and closed their eyes, and just melted into the ground.” He also described Holy Wave’s sound as “an enchanted scroll” to his son.]
JR: It (“holy wave”) is a spell…
JC: There is a card in Digimon called “Holy Wave.”
7LM: Now I have to ask, are you guys gamers?
JC: Me and my wife play Mario Party a lot. We play FIFA a lot.
KH: Legend of Zelda is the only thing I really game hard with.
7LM: I run a D&D games almost every week with some buddies of mine. I once wrote a whole campaign based on The Sword’s Age of Winters album.
KH: Oh, that’s cool.
JC: The guitarist from The Sword, Kyle (Shutt), is a good friend of mine. He’s a coworker of mine. He’s a bad ass dude.
JR: A legend. Ryan’s super into board games.
KH: The guy who’s going on tour with us, Dylan, is the guy to talk to about D&D.
JC: He was having D&D parties during the pandemic.
7LM: I always like to ask this: I once heard an interview with Ray Charles in which he said he sometimes got bummed out because people only wanted to talk with him about music. So, is there stuff outside of music you guys are really interested in or are fascinated with?
JC: Food. In the van, it’s like a constant list of grocery items and food stylings.
KH: Geopolitical hypotheses.
JR: Kyle is like a history master. Everywhere we go, he tells us what’s going on.
7LM: Any particular part of history?
KH: I majored in anthropology and minored in history, so I wanted to be able to put things into a cultural perspective to help everybody respect the meaning of a place. Like, was it a river that led people to live here? Was it a railroad that ran through here? Why does this city exist? Why are there enough people here that some of them would come to a Holy Wave show? I like know that when I go to a place.
JC: Everyone kind of works in TV and film. We all do art department stuff.
KH: If anybody out there needs something…
JC: Holy Wave Art Department! We almost titled the next record Art Department.
JR: When we stay [with friends] in Phoenix, there’s usually a horror movie going on in the background. [Last time], it was Terrifier. Insane, dude. I’m kind of a scaredy cat, but that one was kind of light-hearted in a way.
KH: That one’s weird. It’s weird to think about what the crew was doing while they were filming. That’s what creepy to me.
JR: Yeah, someone’s just eating a slice of pizza. It’s like, “Oh God, lunch was supposed to me thirty minutes ago and he’s still going…”
JC: Last year, we all worked on an indie movie (Two Sleepy People), and I was the art director, and Justin was, too. Ryan was the production designer. We went and saw the movie in the theatre and we were putting all this stuff in there, so we were saying, “There’s Andy’s couch!”, and the main character, he’s looking in the fridge, and he closes the fridge, and there’s a picture of Kyle smoking a cigarette. You can Easter egg yourself into some shit.
7LM: The first or second Psych Fest I ever came to, my late wife and I ate at his ramen place where I was told some of you guys used to work.
JC: (the long-since closed) Daruma?
7LM: Yes! I miss that place. Our waiter asked us who we were excited to see and we told him, “Holy Wave.” He said, “Oh, man! A couple of those guys work here. They probably made that broth you’re eating.”
JR: I worked there for, like, seven years.
JC: Yeah, he was in the kitchen, and Eric, our bass player worked there.
KH: Joey kind of worked there.
JC: Yeah, I worked for the company. At one point, we all worked at a ramen shop. What’s crazy is that our new bass player who’s filling in for Eric after this show, he also worked there. He was a server there. He was our bass player before Eric.
7LM: So, where should we get ramen now?
JR: There’s a place right there (pointing across the street), Tatsu-ya.
KH: That’s where Ryan works.
JC: If you want that Daruma ramen, they have it at Komei. That’s more of a sushi spot.
7LM: When we came back and saw Daruma was closed, we were like, “Nooo!”
JR: It’s so good.
JC: Yeah, it’s the best one.
Holy Wave melting people into the ground at Austin Psych Fest 2026.
The cover of Pale Blue Eyes‘ This House features a photo of the house and parents of lead singer / guitarist Matt Board. Everything in that photo is gone now. Well, the house might still be there, and Board’s memories of it are still intact, but it has new inhabitants now. The lawn is probably different. The decorations in it are different, and the people now living in it are building their own lives while Board, after losing both his parents within five years of each other, is still building his. The album is about loss, but also embracing the change that comes with loss.
The album begins with “More” (as in there is more after loss, if you allow it) as Lucy Board‘s synths and programmed beats immediately bring light and hope, and Aubrey Simpson‘s bass groove gets your feet tapping. As if that wasn’t catchy enough, “Simmering” is even peppier and encourages us to examine the “before and after” when you’re faced with a life-changing event.
After all, there’s “no turning back” after such a thing. You just want to “Hang Out” and let it drift by you “because I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Sometimes you have to be still…although this track is tailor-made to get you to dance. Put it on at the party you throw to alleviate your sadness. It’s perfect. Mrs. Board’s synths and programming on “Spaces” sounds like transmissions from outer space.
Simpson’s bass on “Heating’s On” sounds like something from a lost Go-Gos track. Mr. Board’s guitar goes all shoegaze on “Our History,” and it’s a gorgeous wash of sound crashing over you. “Million Times Over” slows things down just a bit, but the dance beats (and spooky synths) return with “Illuminated.” “Sister” is another shimmering shoegaze stunner. Looking for motorik? Don’t worry. Pale Blue Eyes have you covered with the snappy “Takes Me Over.”
The record ends with the lush “Underwater,” as if you plunged into a backyard pool at the end of a long day or late at night when the party is winding down and it’s just you and a couple close friends. You know things will be okay. You can embrace the shock, the cold, and you can embrace the support and the warmth. It’s all okay.
Take psych-rock / ye-ye giants The Limiñanas and combine them with DJ / producer Laurent Garnier and what do you get? De Pelicula – a super-groovy, super-trippy album that tells the tale of two lovers in a film soundtrack format. The album’s title even means something akin to “like something out of a film.”
“Saul” is a mysterious track about a man who loves film and music but isn’t happy with life until he meets a young woman and decides to leave everything behind to follow her. Saul (“A small town guy.”) and this woman, Juliette (A “beautiful and gentle” prostitute), are prominent figures throughout the record. “Je rentrais par le bois…BB” (“I was returning / coming home through the woods…BB”) is a slightly frightening psych-drone track with Garnier’s synths creating a weird landscape and Marie Limiñana‘s beats creating a slightly paranoid sense.
“Juliette dans la caravanne” (“Juliette in the trailer.”) has Saul meeting Juliette in her 1960s trailer for a rendez-vous that changes his world and unsettles him. “Que calor” brings in Spanish lyrics instead of the French you’ve heard so far. Lionel Limiñana uses a mellotron and organ to neat effect here and the entrance of his fuzzy guitar turns your head into a strong wind.
“Promenade oblique” is another solid instrumental track with a groovy bass line from Lionel. “Te tournes en boucle” (“You’re turning / going in circles.”) is a twisting, looping track that details Saul feeling lost until Juliette shows up to pull him back into a clearer headspace. “Steeplechase” races along with some of Marie’s snappiest drumming and Garnier’s spy movie car chase scene-like synth pulses.
“Juliette” is the tragic backstory of the female half of our lovers in this tale, told through haunting synths and raging guitar. Juliette, born to a single drug-addicted mother, drifts into drugs and eventually kills a pastor who takes advantage of her…only for her to end up a party girl on drugs and having sex for money. “Ne gâche pas l’aventure humaine” (“Don’t spoil / waste the human adventure.) repeats the lyric of “Je t’aime.” (“I love you.”) again and again as siren-like synths give us a warning of what’s ahead for our star-crossed lovers.
“Au début, c’était le début” (“At first, it was the beginning.”) has Garnier taking lead vocals that sound like he’s mourning for lost times, reflecting Saul’s wish for something better for he and Juliette. He doesn’t get those better times, however, because at the end of the album, on “Saul s’est fait planter,” (“Sault got stood up.”), Juliette leaves him. She gets on a train and never returns. That’s French cinema for you.
It’s a cool record telling a cool story with cool grooves. You won’t regret taking this trip.
