Since Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel stepped out on stage as Laura Jane Grace their new album has been something of a revelation for rock fans and a turning point for the band for a number of reasons. First of all, let’s get the elephant in the room out in the open. This album eloquently explores the turmoil that Grace felt before coming out as transgender in 2012 and deciding to no longer continue living as male. Secondly, this marks the band’s first album on their own record label, Total Trebel Music after being dropped from their major label deal in 2010. Meanwhile band members came and went. The real reason why remains unclear.
Despite the tumultuous past few years, founding members of Against Me! Laura Jane Grace and James Bowman have produced a charged up, punk-rock record, simultaneously enraged and vulnerable. Grace is unapologetically blunt in the opening track:
You’ve got no cunt in your strut, You’ve got no hips to shake, And you know it’s obvious, But we can’t choose how we’re made.
Grace is brutally honest about her struggle to be recognised as a woman. There is no sugaring of any pills here, but what she also does is use her own experience of oppression to open up to the floor. Of course, the majority won’t ever fully understand what it’s like to have your perception of yourself not actually match the gender you were born with, but, Grace’s experiences of social pressure to conform seen in Drinking with the Jocks is something relatable. Everyone knows that feeling of isolation so Grace’s exploration of it is applicable not just to the transgender community but farther afield.
Sonically speaking, this album is still very much in line with the punk ethos that Against Me! always had; perhaps seen more clearly in the most ambivalent of the album’s tracks, Osama Bin Laden as the Crucified Christ. Its thundering bass line and belting drums carry you along whilst remaining powerful and confrontational. Grace’s voice is as burly as ever, gritty and free. The strong and violent imagery isn’t something that the band have shied away from previously and it is only during Two Coffins that the pace slows and is perhaps a nod to Grace’s young daughter and how their relationship may or may not pan out.
Against Me!’s violent expression of a fucked up kind of feminine culminates with the stern conviction of Black Me Out where Grace’s lyrics are threateningly hopeful. It’s hard not to be dragged into her journey, as this is really a starting point for her and the rest of the band. Whilst they continue to pick apart the system and explore the nihilism of Grace’s past, Against Me! may, from this point on, become less oblique in their lyrical content. Then again, maybe not. Whatever happens, I can’t wait to hear what comes next.
Transgender Dysphoria Blues is out now.
Lisa Coghlan
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