When Against Me! guitarist/vocalist Laura Jane Grace answers her cell phone to speak with Westender, she reports that although the fall shows her band have been playing in support of new album Shape Shift with Me have been great so far, the tour hasn’t been without its obstacles. Speaking from a Virginia stop just ahead of soundcheck, she’s been eyeballing the Weather Channel's hurricane watch on her home state of Florida, where the quartet is due to play next. After discussing the horrific death and devastation Hurricane Matthew put on Haiti, the concerned frontwoman lightens the mood by discussing an injury that took place on the band's tour with Bad Religion hours before the first show even started.
“I was putting clothes into a dryer and my whole lower back went into spasms and I collapsed on the ground in pain,” Grace explains. “I couldn’t get back up. I had to call my tour manager, and Atom [Willard, drums] and James [Bowman, guitar] lifted me up and put me on a road case. This was two hours before set time. Luckily, Bad Religion had a massage therapist with them who immediately went to work on my back. I got through the set. I’m definitely on the mend now.”
Beyond her physical setback, life is going well for Grace this fall. While she’s been logging on-stage hours and studio time with Against Me! for close to 20 years, this might be the most productive time of her career so far. In addition to issuing the band’s seventh studio full-length in September, she's about to see publication of Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, a memoir exploring her early life, the rise of Against Me!, and her coming out as a transgender woman in 2012. Grace notes she was lucky enough to have been a longtime journal writer, making the years-long process of putting together the self-reflective autobiography a bit easier. By comparison, coming up with ideas for Shape Shift with Me on the road (while supporting 2013's Transgender Dysphoria Blues) was a breeze.
“[Writing the memoir] was a really in-depth, arduous process that required a lot of reflection and a lot of looking back. In this weird way, I was using songwriting as the escape from that,” she says, noting that much of the new album touches on her recent experiences of “dating for the first time as an openly trans person,” following the dissolution of her seven-year marriage to Heather Hannoura in 2014.
“In the past, any time I had ever approached any kind of relationship, I always had this secret that I was holding in, this part of myself that I would deny,” she continues. “It’s been a new experience. Thinking about relationships and things about love through a trans lens was something that I was preoccupied with in a lot of ways while writing, because it was really relevant to me. I felt like I had a lot of questions and things to figure out with it.”
As such, Shape Shift with Me morphs through various interpersonal dynamics. The jangling, slamming “12:03” takes a look at long-distance feelings while on the road; “Crash” is a glam-rock ode to a hard-hitting crush; “Rebecca” is a joyful punk-pop piece about keeping things casual; "Norse Truth" is a harshly spat stomp about cutting someone out of your heart.
“I guess the conclusion I reached is that emotions are genderless,” Grace theorizes. “All of it is a natural spectrum of how you feel when you go through relationships. That was important to represent on the record. Each song is supposed to capture a phase of that, whether that’s the crush of falling in love, or the breakup and the sorrow.”
As the conversation winds down, Grace is asked if she’s excited to hit the West Coast. While she spoke at an event in Victoria last month, it's been over a year since the band came roaring through Vancouver. For timely reasons, she’s plenty pleased to be coming back to the city.
“Going back to what I mentioned about fucking up my back, I’ve been looking forward to this show because I remember where we parked the bus [last time]. Right where you open the door, there was this massage place. That’s where I’ll be first thing in the morning.”
While the tour may have started on an off-note, Against Me! are working the kinks out one date at a time.
Against Me! play Commodore Ballroom on Tuesday, Oct. 25. Tickets $25 from Ticketmaster.
