Source: Matt Higgs
Before their sold out show at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, we sat down with Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! to find out more about their new album Shape Shift With Me. From dumb love songs and writing a book, to lack of representation and the need for queer and trans superheroes, Grace smashes through misconceptions and explains “that there are still great moments in life”.
MOSH: What has touring with Shape Shift With Me been like so far? How has the reception to it been at shows?
Laura: It’s been really good. The album came out in September, and we only did two weeks in the US of headlining tours and then we jumped on a tour with Bad Religion. I was surprised on that tour actually how many people we were playing to each night that would say, “oh I’ve never heard you before” and were checking us out fresh. So that was really cool. Immediately after that, I went on my book tour in November and now here we are for this. It’s been enough time at this point doing our own headlining shows that we can play the new songs and people definitely know them, which is always a good feeling.
MOSH: It must be a lot of hard work to write a book and create a new album at the same time. Was this difficult?
Laura: The book was hard! Writing a book is really really hard it turns out and it took me like four years to do. But I think the reason there’s a new Against Me! Album now, is because I was using it as a distraction from working on the book. Ironically, it really took the pressure off of writings songs, whereas, in the past the pressure was always on writings songs and writing records. So it was nice kind of having relief from that.
MOSH: Is there one song on the album that you’re particularly proud of? Are there any that were particularly difficult to write?
Laura: It was a really easy record to write. It was written primarily on tour, where we’d go out do a tour and come back, have a couple songs and record them, so there was no real struggling with it. I think that maybe if I had to pick one song, the song ‘333’ has the most-happy memory attached to it for me. I wrote it when we were on tour in Spain and it was just like a really cool day. I really like the song ‘Crash’.
MOSH: We loved the album’s focus on love songs and romance from your perspective. There’s definitely a lack of queer and trans narratives in the media, so did the lack of representation motivate you when you were writing this album?
Laura: It did, yeah. I found it really stark and really surprising how after coming out I found it less and less easy to identify with anything that was going on. I wanted to see a narrative and trans representation in so many other different ways than just the coming out story. I want to see trans and queer super-hero movies, I want to see all the stuff that there already is from every other perspective. There’s a million dumb love songs that are a guy pining for a girl, or a girl pining for a guy or whatever, I want to have trans representation in that.
MOSH: ‘Boyfriend’ is a really thought-provoking and important track. Can you tell us about the process of writing it and how you’ve played around with perspective?
Laura: That song and ‘Norse Truth’ I wrote with my friend Cody Votolato who plays in a band called Head Wound City and he played in a band called the Blood Brothers, who we toured with back in the day. He’s a close friend and I’ve always wanted to do some kind of collaboration with him, so I was really happy that it worked out with these two songs. With ‘Boyfriend’ in particular, there was a coincidence with the lyrics where some other friends of mine, Tegan and Sara, had a song called Boyfriend on their new record. I heard this song just as we were mixing our song and I was like “woah, the lyrics to this song, they’re pretty much exactly the same”. The melody is totally different, they don’t sound anything alike, but the sentiment behind the lyrics is the same. Their perspective on it is different than my perspective, but just as interesting in playing around with the sentiment behind the lyrics of “treat me like a boyfriend, some dumb fucking boyfriend”. I think that your perspective on things changes based on how you perceive where the lyrics are coming from. I get that my voice sounds a certain way, so I think that it can be challenging for people to understand where it’s coming from. So there’s both the gender perspective being questioned in those lyrics, then on another side, the levity of treating something you thought was serious as just some dumb fucking boyfriend – but I don’t want to be treated like a boyfriend.
MOSH: Could you tell us what ‘Norse Truth’ is about?
Laura: That was also written with my friend Cody. There was one other song previous to ‘Norse Truth’ that didn’t make the record. Other than that, ‘Norse Truth’ was the first song on the record that was written for the record. Cody sent me a demo of it and I had a notebook full of things written down and went in and spat out all the lyrics in one go. I wanted to have each song on the record be representative of a state of emotion that you go through with relationships. So, there’s the really happy light moments and then there’s the dark moments where love turns into anger, love turns into hate, you know, and that’s the end of the spectrum that ‘Norse Truth’ is on.
MOSH: What’s it like hearing a crowd of people shout the lyrics to songs like ‘True Trans Soul Rebel’ back to you?
Laura: It’s surreal, to say the least. It’s definitely always one of those moments where I am appreciative of the fact that I never thought I would be there experiencing that. It kind of restores a little bit of my faith in humanity.
MOSH: Do you like people seeing you as a spokesperson for the trans community, or are you just trying to be open in order to inspire confidence and empower people?
Laura: Yeah, I am trying to inspire people and give confidence in that way. I feel uncomfortable with being labelled as a spokesperson. I recognise that I do have a platform and I do think that good can come from that by just talking about things that are real, like this is to me. It’s easy in that sense, but as an anarchist I don’t like leaders. I really think that change takes a group effort and it needs everybody participating. Every time I meet someone after a show who is genderqueer, queer, or whatever, it gives me an equal amount of strength and an equal amount of inspiration if they get the same from me.
MOSH: The album addresses the misconception that transitioning fixes everything and that there’s a definitive end point to it. Was this something you were trying to address with the album, if so, why was this important?
Laura: Sure, that’s just the truth and that’s just real. I do think it’s important and I really wanted to represent that more so with the book even. It isn’t like you just flip a switch and all of a sudden you’re magically transformed. I don’t think that idea is healthy if you’re trans and are thinking about starting things like hormones. There isn’t that one thing you’re gonna do and then all of a sudden, ta-da, there you are it’s done. So I do think that’s important. I don’t think it should be romanticised in that way by other people’s perspectives – that once you come out and transition or whatever then it’s done and everything is solved, that’s just not the truth you know.
MOSH: The previous album was very explicitly about struggling with dysphoria and coming to terms with your gender identity. Was it important for this album to emphasise the fact that you are just living and that you’re not defined by being trans?
Laura: Completely. But with the previous question, I don’t want it to seem like you transition and it solves all of your problems or anything like that. But then, at the same time with the record, I wanted to represent that there are still great moments in life, and that you can go out there. I feel that with trans people in particular often times their sexuality is fetishised, and it shouldn’t be that way obviously. As a trans person you can still go out and have romances and fall in love and have sex, and I want that to be represented too. I want the fun side of being trans. I don’t know if you know who Kate Bornstein is? She’s a great writer. She has a book coming out called ‘Trans, Just for The Fun of It’. That sentiment of having fun being trans, I think the idea is important especially for younger people – like, being trans is awesome, not like that you have some fucking disease or something like that, because that’s not right. Being trans is rad, you know.
MOSH: Was the process of writing Shape Shift With Me cathartic?
Laura: Yeah, it was cathartic and also it was a distraction from responsibilities with the book that I was supposed to be focusing on. Writing for me has always been like trying to figure out whatever is troubling me, and in that way this record is kind of different because it wasn’t always about something troubling me. Sometimes it was just like, oh I just had this awesome day, or this thing just happened, or I met this person and I’m really excited about them, I’m going to write a song about it. So, it was good in that way and different.
MOSH: Do you spend a lot of time writing?
Laura: I do spend a lot of time writing yeah. My journal is right over there in a bag. I try to write everyday at least for 15 minutes or something like that, hopefully more, usually.
MOSH: Are you always finding new meanings in the songs that you’ve written? Do the meanings change over time?
Laura: They do, especially if it’s a good song. I think that the sign of a good song is if it can change as you change and you grow I’ve almost been doing this for 20 years and am able to get up on stage and sing songs that I wrote when I was 17/18 years old at 36. They still mean something to me. Doesn’t necessarily mean what it meant when I was young and wrote it, but it does still mean something. I can’t fake it, if I don’t feel it I don’t wanna play it and that’s why we don’t play some songs. The example I usually point out is a song called ‘Burn’, a really early Against Me! song. I’ll say that sometimes and people are like, oh I love that song, and when I ask them what the lyrics are to the second verse they don’t know. That’s because I never finished them, I just kind of mumble at the end of the second verse. So to play this song when I know that I’m not gonna like finish the lyrics now all these years later and would just get up there and mumble, it just seems like, disingenuous. So that’s a good example of a song like that.
MOSH: Why did you decide to write a book?
Laura: Well, I thought that it would be an occupation that I could engage in where I wouldn’t have to deal with people, which was true, up until the promoting it part [laughs]. It really seemed like making peace and reconciling with the past was the right thing to do before going forward. My book is based on journals, journals that I’ve kept since I was like 8 years old. That’s like boxes and boxes of notebooks that I’ve had to haul around with me everywhere I go. It’s really an alarming feeling to basically share your notebooks or share your journals with the world, because if you’ve ever kept a diary, that’s the type of thing you hide under your bed and you don’t want people reading. So there was always that fear where it’s like, okay I’ve got all these boxes of journals and if anyone ever reads through them my god I’m going to be embarrassed. So it was kind of like well if I just publish them, if I just put them in a book then it doesn’t actually matter anymore. I can just get rid of them too, and burn them in a glorious fire.
MOSH: What was it like re-reading your journal entries?
Laura: Painful, honestly. It kind of broke me down mentally as a person. It was undeniable when there were certain patterns that I was locked in and I could see that I’d been doing them over and over and over again you know. But then it also brought back a lot of good memories too, like of touring. It made me really appreciate how many places I’ve been to, how many amazing shows I’ve played and how many bands I’ve met over the years that I love, you know. So it was positive and negative.
MOSH: You’ve explained why you chose the title of your book in your Noisey Mandatory Happiness column. Is it difficult and draining to hear a lot of people saying the title?
Laura: Yeah, it sucks, frankly. I tried to say every night that I was on my book tour that I hate that word. I don’t like using the word, I don’t identify with the word, I don’t like hearing other people use the word towards other people. I know that it’s a complicated word, and I know that like, going back to Kate Bornstein, who I met a couple weeks ago and was on a panel with, she has no problem with that word. But she comes from definitely an older generation of trans people. When I was talking to her she was like, well do you know the history of that word? And I was like, well I guess I don’t know the history of the word. She was like, well trans people coined it. It comes from Australian trans people, and they have the tendency to shorten every word, like that barbecue becomes barby, right. So, I don’t feel like myself as a younger generation or a newer generation trans person could tell Kate like no, you can’t use that word that you’ve been using your whole life. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean I want to use it. I totally respect if other trans people do wanna use the word and identify with the word, but personally I don’t like the word.
MOSH: You’re going on tour with Green Day next year and your first show was actually a Green Day show. That must be quite a surreal thing to be happening?
Laura: Yeah, we played with them in 2005. We did three shows and they were really gracious, really good hosts. They didn’t have to have us on those shows, they could have sold out those arenas on their own you know, but I’m really excited about it.
MOSH: The punk/rock scene is quite heavily dominated by male fronted bands. Are there any queer or feminist punk bands that you’re into right now?
Laura: Yeah, you know I really try to make an effort to make sure that there’s representation on stage each night. With each of the bands we’re on tour with right now, Mobina Galore and Milk Teeth, it’s not just all dudes in the bands. I made a record that was released earlier this year with a Chicana riot grrrl band called Fea. They’re from San Antonia Texas, I think they’re really great. I love Le Butcherettes, I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, so fucking good. Dilly Dally, I don’t know if you’ve heard them, so awesome. I think there’s a lot of really great bands out there right now.
