With the (International) Noise Conspiracy, Sweden, currently centre of all things rock, makes its contribution to the anti-capitalist movement. Singer Dennis Lyxzen and colleagues Sara, Lars, Inge and Ludvig (surnames are optional, punk fashion) wear matching camouflage shirts, and endorse the street activism in Seattle and Genoa. But as most of the group happen to be high- cheekboned and model-thin, the effect is more military-chic spread in Vogue than last-call-to- the-barricades.
It is not their fault that they are more genetically blessed than most, though, and TINC work at cancelling the unfair advantage by playing louder and making more speeches than antecedents such as Rage Against the Machine. When Lyxzen says, "Every time we talk about this abstraction we call the revolution, people get scared because of the conditioning capitalism puts on us," there's no doubt that, as John Lydon sneered, they mean it, man. The crowd even manage a tepid cheer.
But it is not their politics that have filled the Garage to capacity. The key to the Conspiracy's popularity is that they are of the same garage-blues school as the White Stripes (whose Jack White watches intently from the side of the room), and produce a stark, reverb-laden racket that is both retro and wholly of the moment.
It is strangely enthralling to hear bits of the ancient Baby Please Don't Go woven into their own, equally primal, New Empire Blues - all the more so because in the strutting, tambourine-rattling Dennis, who howls from the top of amplifiers and while curled in a foetal ball, they have their own Iggy Jagger.
Sara, the other main force, is Chrissie Hynde cool as she prods her lo-fi keyboard, but Lars, Inge and Ludvig would jointly win Best Bill Wyman Stoneface at the rock Oscars. Still, someone has to have the unglamorous job of chugging out the stripped-back beat, and they do get a chance to thrash out their frustration on a cover of the Stooges' TV Eye.
TINC round off the short, feverish set with New Morning, a swampy number that captures in three minutes the malarial murkiness to which Nick Cave has dedicated his whole career. Lyxzen is practically swinging from the rafters at this point, but remembers to give a clenched-fist salute as it judders to a close. Officially, then, "amazingly sexy" and "Marxism" are no longer a contradiction in terms.
