If music seems to be getting less and less literate, less questioning, less demanding of society, which is odd considering how much subject matter there is, the increasing amount of things there are to be outraged about – it is good to have Noise Factory United doing their bit to prove that rock music can still be smart and switched on.
Making great music is fine, but if you don’t then capitalize on the position you find yourself in by clambering onto your soapbox and having something to say to go with it, you are missing a golden opportunity.
It’s an idea that NFU (isn’t that the trades union for agricultural workers? No matter.) are fully aware of and here, on top of their beguiling blends of post-punk and electronic rock, a collision of analog grooves and digital moves, they weave sonics worthy of Magazine, Gang of Four, or Wire to inhabit the spirit of Olympe de Gouges, the revolutionary proto-feminist who asked, “Homme, es-tu capable d’être juste?” (Man, can you be just?) in her 1791 “Declaration of the rights of woman and the citizen.” Which I’m sure is on all your reading lists. Well, it is a better option than whatever Dan Brown popularist pap is currently doing the rounds.
But I digress. This isn’t just throwaway rhetoric; her questioning and holding power to account are as relevant and necessary as ever, especially after two hundred years of us not learning a thing from her. And thanks to these South Coast sonic demagogs, those words and thoughts head back into the wild, wild west(ern world) to shoot up the town, one where “toxic masculinity rides horse to horse with neoliberal bravado and media spectacle.”
Rock and roll can be as smart as you want it to be. Of course, if you wish to embrace empty sing-alongs and prime posturing, it can do that, but Noise Factory United reminds us that having got to a place where people are actually listening, why not have something to say? And if you have something to say, why not make it something that will get people thinking? I mean, really thinking.
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