Pitchfork

"When I think about the revolution, you're still in my dreams." That's Dennis Lyxzén's yawp on the third track of Armed Love, his internationally noisy and somewhat conspiratorial unit's third full-length, and their first to emerge from behind the beard of Rick Rubin. It's the old story-- boy meets girl but forgets to tell her about the Molotov cocktails in his kitchen sink, only to see her visage reflected in the fire of the office he just bombed. Her dad's, as it would naturally turn out. But then, the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club, so what's a partisan to do? Write an album that puts the catchy before the concertina wire, hell-raising before the consciousness-raising, and hope you can explain the politics later. At this latter notion, Serj Tankian only snorts cynically, and The (International) Noise Conspiracy's Warped Tour stage manager taps his watch with a shake of the head. But the band might be on to something truer than activism and louder than bombs. They're onto a reinvention of that trusty hippy mantra. They're rebuilding the love aesthetic for a fucked-up era, and matching it to their leather and Converse.

Armed Love has a great title going for it, and a batch of tensile tracks built handily for sharp-elbow jiving and maybe even some fist-pump jabbing. It sinks wildly into wily, clever crossbreeds of late-60s proto-punk, organ-driven soul grease, and a succulent trusty jelly of "Hey!"s, "Whoo Whoo!"s, and-- what's this?-- sax solos? Well, the Huey Lewis quality of the latter is forgiven 'cause they're Swedish. Overall, the album is a decent economy piece with as much bottom-end punch as the perpetually underrated Division of Laura Lee's recent Das Not Compute. Indeed, "Black Mask" ("Need somethin' that can turn me on, YEAH!") and "A Small Demand" are like long-nosed, more intelligently rhythmic versions of Jet's strutting, shit-eating pap. And "The Way I Feel About You" is unabashedly upbeat, its crackling electric guitar meeting the B3 halfway across the stage and flirting with the bouncy Motown bottom-end that's ripe for doing the mash potato.

Wait, wait. Isn't this band supposed to be challenging the bourgeoisie in our bathrooms with glinty knives, ruminating in liner notes on social responsibility and The Anarchist's Cookbook, and generally rousing the rabble in what's usually referred to these days as "the punk spirit?" Was that powder keg of vigor lost on the way to Rubin's studio and the American Recordings contract? Well, not lost, exactly. They've still got Revolution in their eyes. But it's pretty clear that, for this album anyway, the (I)NC wants to make us hook up before we act up. Move our hearts, they're saying, and our minds will follow.

The famously no-bullshit Rubin has certainly aided the Conspiracy in the Noise department. The album's a solid slice of Burning Heart label revivalism. It's not innovative, but it's deliberate and economic, with no filler and an inviting dose of Sly Stone-derived soul. Still, anyone looking for an overt political statement might be disappointed, since Armed Love favors moment-shifting sketches over world-changing schematics. "It's finally coming/ The changing weather/ That we've been waiting for," goes "This Side of Heaven", and Lyxzén sings about "tasting the sensation" over the chorus' keening keys and tumbling percussion. He's probably talking about getting the word out, raising awareness, all that. But he could just as easily be selling fine chocolates. "Communist Moon", too, could be a celebration of young revolutionaries joining in the fight against tyranny. But it might also be an invitation for a totally bitchin' after-hours warehouse party.

After shouldering the political burden for these past few years, maybe Lyxzén and his mates are tired of having to talk treatise with groupies instead of showing them the way to the tour bus. To this end, there's "Like a Landslide". Coming late in the album, it's a rousing, thick-bodied rocker with both organ and horn section add-ons, building to a chorus that wouldn't be out of place on a Paul Revere & The Raiders record. But its lyrics seem to dream for a time when togetherness can be just that, not a strategy meeting in some dingy basement. "We're gonna move like a movement," the song's gang vocal climax asserts, and it's a moment when the crux of Armed Love walks in clear view. The (International) Noise Conspiracy (and probably Rubin, too) want love, not war. The solution to our collective social ills is in the pants of your neighbor, and finding that is way more fun than a first date fashioning political effigies.