Against Me!
When Against Me! takes the 40 Watt stage on Tuesday, the Florida band will play the music for which it is known—stormy, loud rock and roll—and project the same punk power as it has since its raucous beginnings in Gainesville’s mid-’90s DIY folk-punk scene.
But there will be one striking difference from the last time the band was in town. When she came out as transgender in an interview with Rolling Stone this past May, singer Laura Jane Grace (formerly Tom Gabel) became the first high-profile musician to do so, in effect breaking a new sort of glass ceiling.
“The cliché is that you’re a woman trapped in a man’s body, but it’s not that simple,” Grace was quoted as saying. “It’s a feeling of detachment from your body and from yourself. And it’s shitty, man. It’s really fucking shitty.”
Grace has begun presenting “full femme” in everyday life and onstage, and is in the process of hormone replacement therapy. Her bandmates and, by most accounts, the band’s fans, have been supportive of the transition. There’s also a new album in the works called Transgender Dysphoria Blues, on which Against Me! will tackle its new reality head-on.
It’s not surprising. The group’s music has always been particularly visceral, whether confronting harsh political realities or the harsher personal realities of the societally marginalized. Indeed, Against Me! has always been a band that, despite signing to a major label and seeing its star rise higher than most of its contemporaries, has held its principles near and dear.
In a way, then, this journey from crust-punk heroes to stadium rockers seems almost preordained. For a whole new generation of young fans, Against Me! is not only rock and roll fun but also a specific source of inspiration.
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