CD of The Week

The story of the past two years of Laura Jane Grace’s life has been well-documented, but with the arrival of Against Me!’s new album Transgender Dysphoria Blues, Grace can tell her tale the way she does best: in song. In 2012, Grace (formerly Tom Gabel) came out as transgender in a major Rolling Stone interview, the first of a number of massive changes in her life and her band. Against Me! began recording Transgender Dysphoria Blues that year and started their own record label (Total Treble), then both members of its rhythm section left the band, and the new studio Grace had built in Florida was destroyed by a storm. I don’t think there is a new album out this year with more of a back story to it.

Then again, AM! has always been a band with external baggage surrounding their music, so this is old hat, in a way. In the end, it’s about the songs, and as usual, Grace has delivered. TDB gets things started right off the bat with the surprisingly rollicking title track, laying out her thesis from the start, with lyrics about “shoulders too broad for a girl” and a chorus pleading for “them to see you/like they see any other girl.”

Grace has always traded in either hyper-specific, wordy lyrics (see “White People For Peace” or “Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners”) or big, broad calls to arms (“New Wave,” “Don’t Lose Touch”). Both approaches are in play on this record, with tracks like “FUCKMYLIFE666” and “True Trans Soul Rebel” touching on the details of life as a trans woman, while massive album closer “Black Me Out” is a scathing kiss-off applicable to just about anyone’s life at some point.

Elsewhere on TDB, “Dead Friend” is a straightforward, heartbreak eulogy for a lost cohort, and Grace sings that “Unconditional Love” may not be enough to “save me” over a bouncy, pub-rock beat. The morbid-yet-romantic “Two Coffins” is the only mellow breather on an otherwise raw, rocking record.Transgender Dysphoria Blues is at its heaviest around the midway point, with the scathing “Drinking With The Jocks” and the dark “Osama Bin Laden As The Crucified Christ,” which is likely the only song you’ll hear in 2014 with a chorus referencing the public execution of Mussolini.

At just 29 minutes, Transgender Dysphoria Blues flies by while packing quite a punch along the way. It is a powerful, personal statement and the first great album of 2014, as Laura Jane Grace has found another new wave’s crest to surf.