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4 min read Longform (On Music)

2014

Against Me! | Transgender Dysphoria Blues (Total Treble)

In 2014, the idea of a call-to-arms punk rock record seems cliché.  The proliferation of the Internet means content has inherently less value than it once did.  Everyone’s got access to the soapbox, and everyone’s an intellectual (maybe).  Moreover, everyone can have a focus-grouped battle cry, one that’ll move downloads—or streams, I suppose—because Millennials are supposedly insistent that style always trumps substance.  That’s just the way it is in 2014—if you’ve got a blank space, baby, someone with a marketing degree will write your name, and make you famous.

So imagine my surprise when my favorite record of 2014 turns out to be an actual, incendiary, punk rock salvo: Transgender Dysphoria Blues by Against Me!

Much has been made about Laura Jane Grace’s struggles with gender dysphoria, her transition, the gestation period of this album, and the supposed lost-concept of the record being about a transsexual prostitute.  You can read about all those things elsewhere and in more depth.  Instead, what really gets lost is how this record is not only Against Me!’s masterpiece, but maybe, the most important punk record in the past decade.  That’s because it’s a record that explores acceptance, ostracism, and persecution from a human perspective—a defining aspect of punk music that’s recently fallen by the wayside.

Yet make no mistake, this record isn’t schmaltzy.  It’s got grit.  It’s got attitude.  Against Me! strip away the Butch Vig lacquer of their past two offerings and opt for a live, bar band growl, one that sports slicing riffs, galloping drums, and even late night acoustic flourishes.  Transgender Dysphoria Blues isn’t subtle.  It punches you in the throat, whether it’s the werewolf thrash of “Drinking With The Jocks,” or the pitch-black sarcasm of the album’s closer “Black Me Out.”  Grace throws vicious haymakers for 10 succinct tracks; she’s pissed and for good reason, it’s a horrible world out there and people are doing some despicably violent things.  For reference: “Osama Bin Laden As The Crucified Christ” is just gruesome.

Grace’s image might dominate headlines, but the real focus of this record is how Grace’s stories can connect with just about anyone who has felt like they were on the outside looking in—regardless of gender.  Nobody can mistake pain of self-criticism on songs like “FuckMyLife666,” or the twang of loss like on the drifting “Two Coffins.”  Grace might have been galvanized by her own personal struggles to write this record, but the record she’s written isn’t exclusive to her transition experience.  At its heart, Transgender Dysphoria Blues is about the practice of empathy with the world at its ugliest.  More specifically, this album is about the injustices Grace has experienced, and seen others experience, catapulting these 10 tracks into the pantheon of great humanist protest records like The Times The Are A Changin’, London Calling, Against The Grain, and Rage Against The Machine.

That’s good company to keep, especially within the disposable confines of 2014.

All in all though, Transgender Dysphoria Blues an honest record that exposes the naked truth that human beings should not be ashamed or persecuted because of their identity.  When Grace’s warrior howl opens the LP with, “Your tells are so obvious / Shoulders to broad for a girl / Keeps you reminded / Helps you to remember where you come from…” listeners are immediately reminded that it’s our differences that make the human experience worth appreciating, not our similarities.  To that end, Laura Jane Grace isn’t brave because she made a punk rock record while identifying as transgender.  Rather, Grace is brave because the most honest, and anti-authoritarian thing you can say in 2014 is dare to love yourself on your own terms, and dare to love others for who they are.

In addition to Transgender Dysphoria Blues, here are my other favorite releases from 2014:

  • Against Me! | Transgender Dysphoria Blues (Total Treble)
  • BADBADNOTGOOD | III (Innovative Leisure / Pirate's Blend)
  • Bane | Don't Wait Up (Equal Vision)
  • Beck | Morning Phase (Fonograf / Capitol)
  • Bohren & Der Club of Gore | Piano Nights (Ipecac Records)
  • Every Time I Die | From Parts Unknown (Epitaph)
  • Freddie Gibbs & Madlib | Piñata (Madlib Invazion)
  • Gerard Way | Hesitant Alien (Reprise)
  • Jack White | Lazaretto (Third Man / XL Recordings / Columbia)
  • Jungle | Jungle (XL Recordings)
  • Joyce Manor | Never Hung Over Again (Epitaph)
  • La Dispute | Rooms Of The House (Better Living)
  • Little Dragon | Nabuma Rubberband (Because Music)
  • Manchester Orchestra | COPE / HOPE (Loma Vista / Favorite Gentleman)
  • Modern Baseball | You're Gonna Miss It All (Run For Cover)
  • Noah Gunderson | Ledges (N/A)
  • Pianos Become The Teeth | Keep You (Epitaph)
  • Run The Jewels | Run The Jewels 2 (Mass Appeal / RBC)
  • Say Anything | Hebrews (Equal Vision)
  • Spoon | They Want My Soul (ANTI-)
  • St. Vincent | St. Vincent (Loma Vista / Republic)
  • Taking Back Sunday | Happiness Is (Hopelesss Records)
  • Thom Yorke | Tomorrow's Modern Boxes (Hostess / XL Recordings)
  • Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross | Gone Girl: Soundtrack From The Motion Picture (Columbia)
  • United Nations | The Next 4 Years (Temporary Residence Limited)
  • The Vines | Wicked Nature (Wicked Nature Music)
  • Warpaint | Warpaint (Rough Trade)
  • Weezer | Everything Will Be Alright In The End (Republic)
  • White Lung | Deep Fantasy (Domino)
  • Young and in the Way | When Life Comes To Death (Deathwish)

Originally published January 2, 2015 on Tumblr.