“Good frames won’t save bad paintings.”
It was either on a show called The Wedge or Loud on MuchMusic where I first saw the music video for “New Noise.” It was an epiphany wrapped in a hurricane of sound. I don’t think I’d experienced anything like it before, and my hunch is many hadn’t. There was an unseriousness to its creepy vibe that I loved and an explicit dedication to exhausting the band’s capacity to aural annihilation which blew me away. Near the start of the video drummer David Sandström plugs his ears. I still don’t think that was for show.
Why is “New Noise” my selection here and not The Shape of Punk to Come? This song, and maybe a few others like “Coup D’Etat” and “Refused Are Fuckin’ Dead,” are the only Refused songs I really listened to before finding out about singer Dennis Lyxzén’s (at the time) newer band the (International) Noise Conspiracy, and leaning in on them. In hindsight, the move checks out with a larger trend of picking up on groups that fell in line with the garage rock revival of the early aughts, and T(I)NC was no exception.
In 2003 I moved back home after my freshman year at University and signed up for a year of community college, living with my parents north of the Twin Cities. While I was there, I opted for a couple electives I figured I’d enjoy, rather than a course roster focused on enriching my post-collegiate professional pursuits. This included a class in the history of pop music, or rock, or something like that, taught by an instructor named Jocko. I don’t remember much of anything from my academic career as an undergrad, but I do remember that class and I do remember Jocko. Another thing I remember is that one of the assignments in his class was to go to a live music event and write a review of it. For my assignment I went to the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis and wrote about the (International) Noise Conspiracy.
The show’s openers were a band called the Boss Martians and another called the Rogers Sisters. For years to come I kept a few of their songs in rotation (tracks I’d likely scored from… I want to say a website called “Insound,” but I don’t think that’s quite right – it was something like mp3.com which provided a low quality downloads, typically from unsigned or independent artists). I don’t have any real memory from the night of the show, but I seem to recall my review of it spanned several pages. For being as nearly illiterate as I was in my teenage years, editorial restraint wasn’t a muscle I’d yet developed. I don’t remember what he told me or if he liked anything I wrote, but Jocko didn’t hate it, as I recall, and that gift of low level validation propelled me forward as I stepped back out of community college and returned to the school where I’d spent the previous year.
I wrote just three article for Buena Vista University’s newspaper, but all three were about music. The last was a recap of my favorite albums of the year (it was 2004 and my top three featured: Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus, and Tom Waits’ Real Gone — for someone with as questionable a taste in music as I’ve had historically, I’m amazed at how un-cringe those selections actually are); the second was a review of Björk’s Medúlla; and the first was a review of T(I)NC’s Armed Love. I just re-read the review for the first time in nearly 20 years and it’s not that bad. Surely it’s no seven page concert review manifesto, and double-surely it was aided with the help of an actual editor, but at the time it was published I was appalled my writing had been stripped of what I thought the point of it was, and furious at the headline that had been slapped on it: “Music that cares about you.” It was so cornball and I was offended I hadn’t been consulted about it prior to publishing, not knowing whatsoever that this is how all publishing of its kind works everywhere. Turns out, the title makes sense if all you knew about the album was what I’d written about the album. I guess that’s how these things work. I’ll save you a rant of how this band single-handedly inspired an early bend toward socialism in my life, and just come back around to saying that all of this came as a direct result of hearing “New Noise.”
My family moved to the States shortly after I’d graduated high school and with no prospects of pursuing higher education I spent a the majority of a year working across a couple warehouses (after which I decided that maybe this whole college thing deserved another look). The first work I got was a sketchy cash-under-the-table job at this furniture company that was “going out of business” for several months, while they funneled in new merchandise they were actively purchasing and “marked it down” against artificially inflated retail prices. While there, I worked with this guy about my same age named Nick, and on more than one occasion I remember sitting in his truck and maxing out the volume to “New Noise.” We shared an appreciation for it and when you’re 18 liking the same somewhat obscure song is more than enough of a reason to become friends. In hindsight, sitting in a suburban parking lot while wreaking of weed and cranking the stereo to its limit was most certainly a thoroughly obnoxious move, but at the time it just felt so good. Broadcasting myself as a fan of this kind of music made me feel cool. I guess it still does. And to this day I don’t think “New Noise” can, or should, be played quietly.
This article is part of Best of the Best, an ongoing series reflecting on and ranking my favorite music and movies.