Oh, the irony of transforming into action figures only to get scooped by Barbie. For all the promotional and physical muscle the Armed have flexed during the rollout of their own summer blockbuster, none of the pull quotes—“a chocolate cake full of broken glass,” “the real story is more confusing than any lie”—has the snap of Greta Gerwig boasting of Barbie that “I’m doing the thing and subverting the thing.” On Perfect Saviors, the Armed are no longer a collective or a project, but a big ol’ rock band with superproducers, magazine covers, clean choruses, and slick videos, all in the service of meta-arena rock that critiques the concept of rock stardom itself. Artists call this sort of conflict “juxtaposition,” diehards might call it compromise. The Armed appear to see it like Gerwig does, that the only way that mass entertainment can reconcile art and commerce is to make the latter finance its own roast.
In that sense, Perfect Saviors finishes the job started by 2021’s ULTRAPOP, a thrilling album that mostly operated in the theoretical realm. “Pop” referred less to melody or cult of personality than a general ideal of instant gratification and the many hours that go into the science of eye and ear candy. “All futures, destruction!” was a good hook; so was having a bodybuilder named Clark Huge hulking over a bank of synthesizers, or singer Cara Drolshagen in triplicate wearing Juggalo makeup. The Armed bypassed the personal disclosure and parasocial identification now expected of superhero films and pop stars to satisfy an eternal tenet of entertainment: Normal people want to watch extraordinary people do cool shit that they couldn’t possibly do themselves.
The Armed’s new album requires less conceptual heavy lifting. There is no prerequisite knowledge of Guy Debord or Andy Kaufman, of the fake “Dan Greene” or the real Dan Greene, or of Frank Turner this time around. The Armed’s unified theory is that everything is wrestling and ball is life. Scene-chewing opener “Sport of Measure” presents the objective side of this philosophy, alluding to basketball, capitalism, or the technical metal and hardcore that defined the Armed’s past work: gamified pursuits where the winner is bigger, better, faster, and just more than the other guy. Lead single “Sport of Form” is an intricate mini-suite that ropes in Julien Baker and Iggy Pop to represent subjective competitions like figure skating and gymnastics and art, the pursuits your coworker with the Barstool shirt doesn’t think are real because they’re judged and probably rigged. In between are things like boxing and the stylized, shockingly straightforward live performance video for the GNC-glam stomper “Everything’s Glitter”: Victory can be achieved by knockout or just looking really damn good.
