Against Me!'s "Shape Shift With Me" (Total Treble) finds the veteran punk band reveling in singer Laura Jane Grace's newfound freedom with hard-hitting results.
Grace, who came out as a transgender woman in 2012, made a powerful statement about identity with the band's 2014 album "Transgender Dysphoria Blues." With "Shape Shift With Me," she is once again balancing the personal with the political, but with a bit more subtlety and humor.
On "Delicate, Petite & Other Things I'll Never Be," Grace demands, "I wanna know how you stay you" over a sleek, danceable bass groove that wouldn't have fit on previous Against Me! albums. They take gloom over the top on the Bauhaus-influenced "Dead Rats," ending with the chorus that goth kids will soon be chanting, "Shallow graves for all dead rats! I like the dark clouds the best!"
Of course, that doesn't mean Against Me! has lost its political edge, as shown in the ferocious "ProVision L-3," a protest song about American surveillance named after an airport security scanner where Grace screams, "What can you see inside of me?" with thrashing rage.
THE GRADE: A
BOTTOM LINE: Finding the freedom to rock even harder.
