Viagra Boys at Alexandra Palace

Ally Pally represents Viagra Boys’ biggest headline show to date, a landmark the Swedish post-punk band treat with all the reverence the occasion deserves. On the massive screen behind the stage, a camera zooms in on attendees and kindly requests they down their beer, to roars of approval from the London crowd. This is the People’s Palace after all.

That sense of occasion is elevated further when frontman Sebastian Murphy announces that today is his birthday, and his parents are in the audience. “I never thought 36 could look this good,” he says, rubbing his heavily tattooed beer belly. Dressed in his usual wraparound shades and Adidas trackies, Murphy also explains that he was in hospital this morning with back pain, which makes the swaggering singer more like Iggy Pop than ever.

But this doesn’t appear to slow him down, as the band tears through a no-filler setlist that leans heavily on the latest album Viagr Aboys, pausing only for Murphy’s stories about a jockey who shares his name and birthday, and how he almost drowned in a swimming pool after stealing medicine from a house party when he was 16. These are interrupted by the rhythm section launching into the next song before the stories reach any coherent endpoint.

The size of the room makes the sound naturally boomy, but what Ally Pally loses in intimacy and clarity, the band makes up for in intensity, stretching out with wigged-out guitar solos and a second saxophonist for the free-jazz blowing of Down in the Basement. Drinks are thrown, umbrellas get broken (welcome to London!), and people dressed as shrimp hit the floor, while Murphy’s parents look on with what one can only assume is pride. But there are surprisingly tender moments too: Murphy dedicates the live debut of Lick the Bag to the late former guitarist Benjamin Vallé, explaining that the track (about licking drugs from the corners of a baggie) was Vallé’s favourite. In Viagra Boys’ world, there is no greater tribute.

Almost as touching is Murphy’s dedication of the encore ballad River King to his fiancée, before the whole band piles into B-movie anthem The Bog Body. The other highlight of the night is an over ten-minute version of Research Chemicals, which starts with a ranting Murphy lying down in the fetal position, doing his best impression of an ultrasound. Congratulations Mr and Mrs Murphy, it’s a Viagra Boy!

While this band arrived fully formed, their live act keeps growing with every tour. Let’s just hope those shrimp weren’t too badly hurt…