(International) Noise Conspiracy

A conversation with Lars Stromberg

(October 2005)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

Protest musicians thrive on the belief that they are an endangered species.  While the effectiveness of politically and socially minded music-makers during the Reign of Bush can (and should) be debated, the mounting numbers can not.  They come in all shapes and sizes, of course, but many fall into one of three categories:  1) Elder statesmen, 2) Angry punks, 3) Dour folkies.

Sweden’s (International) Noise Conspiracy are cut from a different cloth.  This is apparent throughout their catalog, but even more visible during their live show.  They wear matching, Star Trek-reminiscent outfits, strike Stones poses, and play an energetic form of power-pop that—especially on the recently released, Rick Rubin-produced Armed Love—is more hopeful than despondent.  “Let’s make history right now!” goes one plaintive plea.  But where to begin?  And why now?  Guitarist/vocalist Lars Stromberg weighs in.

Is it a relief to finally have the album out in the States?  Is it strange to still be talking about it as a “new” album?

Yeah, we finished about a year and a half ago, so I guess it is kind of strange.  But you get into the swing of things, and we like talking about these songs, so we’re not really bothered by it.

In the meantime, has it been all touring or are there new songs being written already?

We’ve been pretty much touring constantly since last March, since we did South by Southwest.  Also, we didn’t really want to get into the swing of writing new songs, because with the uncertainties of putting this album out, we didn’t want to have ten new songs that we really wanted to play when we hadn’t even put this record out.  Now that we have put the record out, we’re going to start writing—we have a lot of ideas in the bag, but we’re just going to bring them out at this point.  Right now is the time to get on the next step.

I was talking to Anti-Flag once about touring after 9/11, and they said that, even though they ran into more problems than usual with promoters and so forth, the kids really responded in a positive way.  There was a lot of “I thought I was the only person who thought that way.”

Right.  That’s how we felt about it, too.  We were supposed to fly into New York on September 12th to play CMJ.  Obviously, that didn’t happen, but we did tour the U.S. about a month after that.  We talked a lot, even with people outside the band, about how we should approach that.  Of course, we realized that we couldn’t be part of the censorship of ideas and theories and mentalities.  Just because something terrible happened doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about it.  That’s a lot of the whole U.S. “united, we stand as one” propaganda wanted you to do:  look forward and don’t talk about this in a way that’s critical.  So we decided to talk about the fact that 9/11 was the perfect opportunity for U.S. foreign policy makers to take a step back and realize what its part in the world is—to actually analyze it on a different level.  As you said, a lot of kids found that to be really exciting and positive.  People said that it was good that we didn’t back and actually talked about this, because no one else seemed to. 

There was a time when not only could you not talk critically, but you could hardly say words like “explosion.”

Exactly.  Just yesterday we were talking about the songs that were banished from the radio because someone was wearing a “It’s Raining Men” T-shirt.  Obviously people can take offense, but, at the same time, how do you just strike something that happened from people’s conscience?  The media has been really good with that.  Then, with people not being aware of exactly what’s going on, it’s really easy to go and do other things and justify them.

Sometimes bands that aren’t “political” bands, per se, will bristle when they’re asked a political question because they see this strict separation between their music and their opinions.  They could have an album full of largely autobiographical songs about the most intimate details of their lives, but then they get flustered or embarrassed or extremely cautious about anyone perceiving them to be on a dreaded “soapbox.”  Do you have any insights into what causes that mentality?

Hmm, well, I think in the music industry it’s because bands don’t want to say anything that could rub anyone in the wrong way.  Everyone is really cautious about whether their record is going to sell and whether people are going to come to their shows.  With us, not ever having had that attitude about music, we don’t really care.  We could care less whether people get offended; we’re not going to say it a different way.

We look at music and the culture of protest and the culture of protest music, and we want to carry on that legacy more than a lot of bands, even those that might be directly influenced by Bob Dylan or MC5.  Of course, music itself can’t save the world.  If it could, the world would be a beautiful place because there are so many good protest songs.  But we do know for a fact that it can serve as an inspiration.  We all got into politics not through politicians and youth movements but through music and musicians.

That’s how we look at it.  Other people look at it from the commercial view.  From the commercial point of view, we’ve chosen suicide—we talk about communism at our shows!  (laughs)

That’s a good lead-in to my next question.  When you talk about socialism or communism, is that a label that gets misconstrued mostly in the United States, or does that happen everywhere?

It is misconstrued everywhere, but on different levels.  In the States, I think, the entire word gets misconstrued.  People don’t understand why you would even want to talk about communism because the word itself is sort of a gateway to oppression.  No one really knows what’s going on behind that word, or that it’s talking about equality and the production of goods and what you need on an equal level, and so on and so forth.  A lot of people don’t see the division between communist ideas and oppressive state communism.  I think that any band that has radical ideas, though, is bound to be misunderstood and misinterpreted and misrepresented.  We have to expect that to happen, and just talk as much as we can about it to make the misconceptions fewer.

Yeah, I mean, the bulk of the education for the younger generation is going to look like “And then Uncle Ronnie destroyed those evil Communists once and for all.”

Right, right.  Therefore, coming here and talking about socialism is, in a way, more important than talking about it in Italy, where the socialist tradition is so far-reaching back in history.  We go there and most people are already down, so you don’t even really have to talk about it that much.  You just go and have a good time together and then, after the show, you can get into discussions.  

What gives you the hope that socialism would be a viable real-world alternative?

I think probably because more people are realizing how alienated they feel in front of their own culture.  In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, for instance, people are noticing racial diversities and racial and class divides that they might not have thought about before, or might not have seen that openly before.  As capitalism becomes more rampant and more savage in its quest to profit more, people are going to realize that, and people are going to get confused and angry—and, ultimately, I think are going to get together and do something about it.

Obviously when any band critiques capitalism so sharply, there are going to be some DIYers and message board kids who pay a LOT of attention to every kind of business move that the band makes.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.  That’s been since day one for us.

Is that an ongoing battle?  Or did the band settle that upfront and arrive at a place where you don’t worry about what the kids might be saying?

No, we kind of do, because with what we’re doing and who we’re working with at this point, we need to keep ourselves on our toes.  So the input of people who actually care enough to be on our message board is really important.  They’ll honestly feel the things that they write; if they feel that we’re sellouts, they’ll print why.  We can just brush it off if we feel it’s something we’ve talked about since we started out.  But once in a while there’s a really important point coming out, and it’s really important to look into that.  We’re always really conscious, though, of what we’re doing and why we’re doing, so most of the things that people would comment on are things we’ve already given a lot of thought to do.

It’s always worth it to be the band that fights harder to keep everything in your own control.  With this release, it’s paid off a lot.  We were supposed to have one of those big, ugly FBI labels on our record, and we managed to fight that off entirely, which was really invigorating for us.  Of course, everyone at first said, “No, every band has that, you have to have it.”  Tom Whalley, who’s the head of Warner Brothers music, is actually on the RIAA board, so he’s been one of the people who decided that they need the logo on the record.  But we managed to not have it.  If you do fight for something which is actually within your capabilities of fighting for, most of the times it can have really positive results.

Have you had to pick your battles?  Have there been concessions made?

Not really.  As long as you’re in everyone’s face about what you want to do and how you want to do it, usually it works out.  Obviously, the label knew what band they signed, so they knew we were going to be annoying about certain things.  (laughs)  We’re just showing them what was to be expected.

Spending so much time on the road, is it harder to feel in touch with what’s going on back home on a local level?

It does get harder.  As you said, we’re never home.  What we do with our band is we look at the band as our local organization.  At the same time, having been on the road for a long time, we’ve gained a lot of friends all over the world, and they help us stay in touch with all the places that we go to.  We have friends in the States who will help us link to good blogs and writers and events that are going on throughout our U.S. tour.  We have friends like that in Europe, too, and we’re making some friends like that in Asia.  We played Indonesia and we talked to a lot of people who had a lot of interesting viewpoints and really heavy historical experiences.  So we keep ourselves in touch through our connections—which makes perfect sense.  We’re going to be in Toronto tomorrow, and playing there and talking about Swedish politics doesn’t make much sense.  If you know a little about what’s going on in Toronto or even Canada, that makes a lot more sense.  We talk about things on a global level, and we feel that internationalism is a good thing.

Jumping back to Swedish politics, what are the major topics up for discussion right now?  Here in the States at the moment we have the embarrassing “abortion, gay marriage, theory of evolution” lineup.  Is the conversation more elevated in Sweden?

To some extent, I guess it would be.  What we’re talking about a lot in Sweden right now, just looking at the last 15 or 20 years, is the enormous grasp neoliberalism is gaining on things, and how the Social Democrats kind of sold the workers’ movement out.

Also, we have an election in Sweden next year, and the right-wing is getting a lot more potential voters, which is kind of scary.  Even though we don’t believe in the parliamentary system at all, we still know that by not voting for the leftist parties, you’re kind of giving your vote to the right-wing parties.  The main issue in Sweden has always been the politics of discontent.  If you’re not content with the Social Democrats, you’re not going to try to go in and show a more radical and viable alternative, but you’re going to be disappointed and you’re just going to vote for the other one.  Kind of like here.  (laughs)  We have seven or eight political parties, and here you guys have two, but the discontent politics are pretty much the same, anyway.

Well, that’s depressing.  Even the rise of that mythical third party won’t necessarily make it much better in the long run, huh?

Exactly.  But I think it would be good to shake things around in this country, definitely.  I was a part of a discussion panel at a festival in Austria, and there were a couple of American guys there and they were saying that it was really sad because Nader came in and fucked democracy up.  It’s so funny that people would say that, that by presenting a third option, a guy is destroying democracy.