We've been here before, of course. 1970: the MC5's second album, "Back In The USA" - when Jon Landau, gave the revolutionary Detroit rockers a production makeover that tempered their tendency to indulge in twelve-minute Sun Ra-style freakouts and repackaged them as a straight up rock 'n' roll garage band. The political song titles remained ("Human Being Lawnmower", "The American Ruse") but they now sounded like Little Richard's northern state brothers. They even covered "Tutti Frutti" - which, looking back, is probably one of the most political songs ever written. Rebels in mind, but dated in sound.
And now, three decades later, Rick Rubin has performed a similar feat for Sweden's answer to the Molotov Cocktail. "Armed Love" finds the Noise Conspiracy in as conspiratorial mood as ever (it even comes packaged with a message from Uruguayan revolutionaries: "O Bailan Todos, O No Baila Nadie" - or, for those who don't speak Uruguayan: "Either everyone dances or no one dances") but representing themselves with a straight down the line rock 'n' roll sound. Rubin's even recruited veteran keyboardist Billy Preston to achieve that 'classic' sheen, while every Jaggeresque nuance of Dennis Lyxzen's vocal is accentuated.
The result is a great straight-down-the-line rock 'n' roll album. The likes of "Communist Moon", "Black Mask" and "A Small Demand" not only brim with a righteous fervour, but they're as powerful as the genre's got any right to be in 2004 - all punchy hooks and blocked soul energy. Amid several memorable choruses there's even a saxophone solo. So far, so trad. And, if only they just sung about idiot walks and so on, that's all there would be to it. But the Noise Conspiracy want to be something more, and so they open up that old wasp's nest of vipers about pop and politics.
This throws up all the usual questions. Can you choose a vocation that essentially revolves around entertainment and commerce (eg. making people dance and selling CDs) and combine it with a political message? Does being a rock star (ie. a narcissist) negate you from you being a politician in the first place? Etc, etc.
It's enough to make the head spin and little wonder only the really committed (Fugazi, Godspeed You Black Emperor!) can keep it up 24/7 while the likes of Primal Scream immerse themselves in piggy culture when they're not chaining themselves to fences and finding something that rhymes with "venal psychic amputees".
You hope they get what they're fighting for, but, like the MC5, you fear the same result. After "Back In The USA" bombed, Wayne Kramer's proto-punk crew made one more - admittedly great - album before disintegrating in a blur of drugs, guns, prison and death. Thirty years later and they're sponsored by Levis with Ian Astbury and Dave Vanian from The Damned guesting on vocals.
Everyone loves to kick out the jams, but if you want to know whether rock music can inspire revolution then maybe there lies your answer.
