Against Me!
Transgender Dysphoria Blues
Total Treble (2014)
Score: 9/10
Lawrence Arms
Metropole
Epitaph (2014)
Score: 8/10
Ok, I know neither of these records can be considered “new” anymore – but since Against Me! is playing Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas tonight, I thought it might be a good time to share my thoughts on their latest release, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, paired with thoughts on one of my other favorite band’s latest – Metropole by The Lawrence Arms.
Bias time – Against Me! and Lawrence Arms are bar none my two favorite bands, and due to their coinciding association with Fat Wreck at the turn of the millennium, they are always kind of intertwined in my head. Some of my best memories are blasting As the Eternal Cowboy and Apathy and Exhaustion in the early years of college and over ten years later those albums are still in heavy rotation on my iPod. So when the two released their long-awaited new albums just weeks apart, I was stoked. For Against Me!, Transgender Dysphoria Blues marked the band’s return to a more stripped down style after the anthemic White Crosses while Lawrence Arms’ Metropole promised us more of the dual vocals that made their last album, 2006’s Oh! Calcutta! so memorable. So how did the two albums stack up to the bands’ great back catalogs?
Against Me! has ridden a wave of mixed response almost since their inception, with each subsequent album further splintering fans. It’s not surprising, as the band started with a very minimal approach and many were endeared to that, and turned off by their later, polished sound. But with band leader Laura Jane Grace dealing with the heartfelt, personal lyrics relating to her own gender dysphoria, a return to the indie world through self-releasing the album and a backing band that includes NOFX’s Fat Mike and Rocket From the Crypt’s Atom Willard, many of the band’s older fans were ready to embrace Against Me! again. And the record, which the band labored on for 2+ years, is a real winner. The return to a more raw production sound really compliments lyrics like “Don’t wanna live without teeth / Don’t wanna die without bite” from album highlight and winner of silliest song title of the year “FUCKMYLIFE666.”
The rollicking, folk-tinged title track showcases Willard with a drum solo that begs to be imitated in air and “Dead Friends,” a poppier track whose “First girl you loved fell asleep in a casket” hook is tied with Gaslight Anthem’s “Helter Skeleton” as 2014 song Matt Skiba wish he wrote, can’t be listened to just once. Songs like “Drinking With the Jocks” and “Osama bin Laden as the Crucified Christ” drag down the middle slightly, but the album ends on another high, the confrontational “Black Me Out,” a song that Grace has been playing live for at least two years now and it’s a track that practically dares to be sung along to with aggressive lyrics like “I want to piss on the walls of your house.”
Lawrence Arms, with 6 other full lengths under the belt and frontmen Brendan Kelly and Chris McCaughan having 18 years of playing together when including their time in The Broadways, have established a sound that works for them and mostly stick to it on Metropole. Chris McCaughan, who for some reason never seems to get as much credit as his songwriting partner, really shines on this record. The album’s more melodic nature, which most resembles the band’s 2003 effort The Greatest Story Ever Told, lends itself well to McCaughan’s cleaner vocal style, most notably on first single “You Are Here” and “Beautiful Things,” arguably the most perfect single slice of punk rock to come out this year. It’s almost impossible to get the chorus of “Don’t kill all the beautiful things / I was searching for truth, in the dust of my days / I was so lost, and I was so young” out of your head and drummer Neil Hennessey’s steady tempo only bolsters the song.
Kelly gets his turn to shine on “Seventeener (17th and 37th),” a melodic, confessional song that sounds like it could be the sister of The Greatest Story Ever Told’s “The Rambling’ Boys of Pleasure.” I don’t think Kelly has ever sounded as good as he does on the bridge, singing “So tonight I’ll sit up here / With these streetlights and these seventeen beers / Straight from the page of a teenage diary, Underneath these shitty stars like I was seventeen.” Kelly’s a few years older than me but I can still relate to growing older in the punk rock scene. It’s a song about growing up from a man who made a name for himself telling drunken jokes to punk rock kids and the honesty found within makes for an exceptional song.
While neither Against Me! nor The Lawrence Arms are breaking new ground musically with these two records, not every record needs to completely redefine a sound to be good. If you’re a fan of either band you’re going to be pleased with what you find here and newcomers will find these releases act as perfect primers for the musical discovery ahead. And don’t miss Against Me! at the Brooklyn Bowl tonight. I’ll certainly be there.
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