Against Me! has had themselves a pretty wild ride these last 17 years - an artist
that in some circles went from being an absolute unknown, to ideal punk icons, and
to others they sold out from their sneering anarcho-punk roots. Now, their lead
singer Laura Jane Grace, born Tom Gabel, has suddenly found herself as this
huge iconic figurehead for the transgender community, as she bravely came out
to the public and her decision to continue making music in the punk scene. It
was at this point that Against Me! began writing and recording their most
difficult album, Transgender Dysphoria
Blues, which is a fairly self-descriptive depiction of Laura’s emotional
struggles over her entire life. The question is, would the album be her magnum
opus, or a huge publicity stunt? Stay tuned lovelies.
So to put things in perspective, we start with the first Against Me! studio album,
Reinventing Axl Rose. It was released
in 2002 and has since come to be regarded as a pretty great record by lots of
respectable folks. It’s notable in its folky style, taking cue from folk-punk
legends like The Pogues and Violent Femmes, but in a sincere and uniquely new
hardness to it. Think GG Allin levels of energy but with the sanity of someone
who can write lyrics as witty and poignant as those featured in the records big
hit “Baby, I’m An Anarchist!”, a thundering call for, well, anarchy. This is
the album to hear when going through that quintessential Alex DeLarge phase of
life with all the anger and angst that accompanies it.
The follow up, Against Me! as the
Eternal Cowboy suffered a bit from sophomore slump, a slicker album that
felt over-produced and the cultural posterity in lyrics and song titles with
names like “Cliché Guevara” does have a pretty short shelf-life, and does not
make for repeat listening. They rectified this considerably with their third
studio release, Searching For a Former
Clarity, a surprisingly intellectual concept record dealing with themes of
self-isolation and disassociation. A splendid joy for fans of the band, however
a likely a painful struggle for Grace, beginning to come to terms with her
gender confusion. The next steps would probably only make things more
complicated for her and her band.
Their fourth record New Waves
would find them for the first time on a major record label, produced by Butch
Vig, a great producer but not exactly reputable in the folk-punk community. Not
that you could really call Against Me! a folk punk band anymore, there wasn’t
any acoustics on New Waves at all.
The fans hated it. Diehards from the early Axl
Rose-era would denounce the band entirely as too poppy and sell-outs. The
same thing most bands go through, but the folk-punk hipster scene can be
particularly brutal. A world of self-made cassette demoes and Pabst-Blue Ribbon
doesn’t take kindly to glossy Best Buy deluxe editions and music videos
premiering on Fuse TV.
All that shit aside, it wasn’t a terrible record, if you listen to it with a
grain of salt. It’s just a confused record. Laura still doesn’t seem to know
who she is. Some of what she was doing before comes through on some tracks like
“Thrash Unreal” and “White People For Peace” which really echo the lyrical
nihilism and anarchic themes of her early recordings. But there’s some definite
flaws as well particularly with tracks like “Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart” and “Stop!” are examples of substandard. Additionally, Laura’s coming to
terms with her gender and issues start becoming apparent in songs like “The Ocean” which, in retrospect is a great song, giving hope that perhaps an album
of material like this would be just as good.
Against Me! returned with a fifth studio album White Crosses featuring a new drummer and sounding wearier and
somewhat like elder-statesmen, which in part, they were. They’d been playing
shows for more than ten years together at this point. And Laura seems to really
empathise with the anger of her fans at their selling out and abandoning them,
but systematically calls them out on this and a need to grow up and move on,
adapting and not so much selling-out as, being a realist. The lyrics of “I was a Teenage Anarchist” are an absolutely fantastic sequel to “Baby, I’m an
Anarchist” Spitefully flicking off all the punk-ass former fans while wistfully
wishing for the days when she was one of them. If only the rest of the album
held up to that particular tracks standards, this might have signalled a new
era of greatness for the band. It was not to be. One or two of the other tracks
are decent and similarly nostalgic for younger simpler days, but just not the
same. The Foo Fighters styled riffs and power chords just don’t suit the band
very well.
Financially speaking, both White
Crosses and New Waves were very
successful, prompting of course the assumption that the band might stay with
this style. There was always the chance they could return to their more
acoustic and punk roots though.
Then Laura decided to come out as transgender in a fearless article with
Rolling Stone. She announced her intent to remain the lead singer of the band,
and promised their long-time fans she would rock just as hard in a skirt. It
proved to be true; they played several shows post-gender transition to ravenous
and supporting fans. The punk rock community being supportive to the plights of
an emotionally damaged feminist transsexual? Maybe there’s hope for the GOP
too.
So then last year the band announced their sixth studio record, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, a
chronicling of Laura Jane’s struggles. It came out this month and it’s pretty
good. Albeit it’s a bit of a mess, in the sense that it is trying to regain
some of the fierceness of their early days as well as maintain their newer
slicker sound, and their dynamic with two new band members, this time a bassist
as well as a drummer is without question a bit uncertain but all that becomes
irrelevant in the opening slashes of the title track as Laura screams furiously
about her entire life’s woes and the clanging energy of Reinventing Axl Rose’s
“Pints of Guinness” is felt for the first time since then.
Not every track is at that level of excellence. But there’s a few that
definitely shine fairly brightly. “True Trans Soul Rebel”, “FUCKMYLIFE666” and
“Black States” are good examples. There’s filler, there’s shitty over-produced
nonsense, but Laura’s heart is definitely here. Be you a fan of their early
stuff, their new stuff or simply interested in this very brave girl’s story,
you should listen to this album. It’s not a grand masterpiece of sexual
discovery and not perfect, but it’s heartfelt and earnest and that is enough.
~Johnny Hoel
6.8
