Current Events > Do you like Against Me!?

(+) Yeah! (+)

They have some nice songs, IMO
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Honestly I've only ever really listened too Reinventing Axl Rose but I listened to that a shit load when I was younger
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Did their singer ever transition?
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I really like them overall, but their post transition stuff hasn't been very good.
I keep trying to listen to TDB because I want to tune in to the message the singer is attempting to convey but it gets lost in a lot of self aggrandizement and messy vocals.
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Conflict posted...

They also made an album pretty much centered around transgender dysphoria a few years ago

Transgender Dysphoria Blues is the only album of theirs I ever listened to.

It was pretty good.
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Very much so. But I'm also one of the weirdos who vastly prefers New Wave and on rather than the opposite.

Jorep posted...

but their post transition stuff hasn't been very good.

what the fuck

TDB is a great album, and SSWM is honestly their career best imo.
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ASithLord7 posted...

Very much so. But I'm also one of the weirdos who vastly prefers New Wave and on rather than the opposite.

Jorep posted...

but their post transition stuff hasn't been very good.

what the fuck

TDB is a great album, and SSWM is honestly their career best imo.

Shape Shift With Me isn't too bad and there's a couple songs I really like, but it's nowhere near the level of White Crosses.
I think the biggest problem with TDB is that it feels very much like a vanity project and perhaps something I'd expect from a band just starting out, not a tight-knit group of musicians in their mid-30s. A lot of the lyrics (and especially the song names) are very immature and the choruses fall very flat, lacking the raw energy you'd come to expect from Against Me.

Which isn't to say there's not a place for TDB because perhaps more than any album it's a personal journey for Laura and, much like Say Anything's "Hebrews," that's both a blessing and a curse. The biggest thing that drags TDB down for me, though, is just in how un-subtle and immature it feels for most of the ride.
Coming off very insightful songs like "Thrash Unreal" and "I Was A Teenage Anarchist" I would expect more of the lyricism that accompanied such a journey, rather than the madcap "Fuckmylife666" teenage diary that it turned into.
They've always had artistically-stilted songs like "White People For Peace" jackknifed against their better jams, but I'm still holding out hope that we get another White Crosses level experience.

Shape Shift With Me gives me hope that they'll move back in that direction if they continue making music because it's a more mature look at some of the themes inherent with TDB but it hasn't made it to my regular rotation.
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I got into Against Me! back in 2004. Reinventing Axl Rose and As the Eternal Cowboy were my first two albums. Really liked RAR and started learning their songs immediately on guitar. Got to see them in 2006 at a tiny local venue with a two foot stage. People were on stage the whole set. I was in line waiting to piss and James Bowman gets in line behind me. We start shootin the shit. It was pretty cool. Back when LJG was Tom Gabel, she was still cool as shit. Excellent set. Baby, I'm An Anarchist! probably had everyone the loudest. Of course the venue closed like two years later.

RAR is still my favorite and I prefer their older stuff but nothing against the newer stuff.
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Some of the acoustic versions of TDB songs are bloody fantastic.
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Jorep posted...

ASithLord7 posted...

Very much so. But I'm also one of the weirdos who vastly prefers New Wave and on rather than the opposite.

Jorep posted...

but their post transition stuff hasn't been very good.

what the fuck

TDB is a great album, and SSWM is honestly their career best imo.

Shape Shift With Me isn't too bad and there's a couple songs I really like, but it's nowhere near the level of White Crosses.
I think the biggest problem with TDB is that it feels very much like a vanity project and perhaps something I'd expect from a band just starting out, not a tight-knit group of musicians in their mid-30s. A lot of the lyrics (and especially the song names) are very immature and the choruses fall very flat, lacking the raw energy you'd come to expect from Against Me.

Which isn't to say there's not a place for TDB because perhaps more than any album it's a personal journey for Laura and, much like Say Anything's "Hebrews," that's both a blessing and a curse. The biggest thing that drags TDB down for me, though, is just in how un-subtle and immature it feels for most of the ride.
Coming off very insightful songs like "Thrash Unreal" and "I Was A Teenage Anarchist" I would expect more of the lyricism that accompanied such a journey, rather than the madcap "Fuckmylife666" teenage diary that it turned into.
They've always had artistically-stilted songs like "White People For Peace" jackknifed against their better jams, but I'm still holding out hope that we get another White Crosses level experience.

Shape Shift With Me gives me hope that they'll move back in that direction if they continue making music because it's a more mature look at some of the themes inherent with TDB but it hasn't made it to my regular rotation.

I definitely do get what you mean about TDB. I think Laura just had that stuff she needed to get out of her now that everything was in the open.

And as much as I cringe at the title of FML666, I think it's a really great song.
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@ASithLord7 I know what you mean, FML666 is actually one of the songs I really dig on TDB XD

That's a big reason I'm not as harsh as I potentially could be on the album, as well. At the end of the day a band is going to (or at least should) make the music they want to make and with TDB that's precisely what happened. Whether an audience is receptive to that is what defines the music industry but as much as I'm not too impressed with the album, I can respect that the singer had a lot of issues she was working through and used her platform as an artistic outlet.

There's a part of me who thinks that perhaps Transgender Dysphoria Blues should have been a solo project and Shape Shift With Me should have just been their next album, sort of a "Matt Skiba And The Sekrets" juxtaposition alongside Alkaline Trio, but I definitely feel the personal journey. That's a big reason I've attempted to give it so many listens rather than write it off as though it were, say, a modern Green Day album.

I'll definitely have to check out some of these acoustic version though.
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