AGAINST ME! TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM, SHAPE SHIFT WITH ME,
VIA TOTAL TREBLE / INGROOVES ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
FULL-LENGTH FOLLOW UP TO THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED STUDIO ALBUM,
TRANSGENDER DYSPHORIA BLUES, NOW AVAILABLE FOR
PRE-ORDER ON ITUNES AND AMAZON
FIRST SINGLE, “333,” NOW STREAMING ONLINE
DRUMMER ATOM WILLARD TO BE FEATURED AS GUEST MUSICIAN ON
LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS THIS WEEK STARTING TONIGHT, JULY 18
LAURA JANE GRACE’S FORTHCOMING MEMOIR, TRANNY: CONFESSIONS OF PUNK ROCK’S
MOST INFAMOUS ANARCHIST SELLOUT, TO BE RELEASED BY
HACHETTE BOOKS ON NOVEMBER 15
FALL NORTH AMERICAN HEADLINE DATES AND TOUR WITH BAD RELIGION
AND DAVE HAUSE ANNOUNCED
STREAM: “333” (FROM SHAPE SHIFT WITH ME)
Celebrated American rock band Against Me! are proud to announce the Friday, September 16 release of its highly anticipated forthcoming full-length album titled Shape Shift With Me. Being released on the band’s label Total Treble (in partnership with INgrooves) and serving as the follow up to the band’s critically acclaimed studio album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, Shape Shift With Me is now available for pre-order on Amazon (LP, CD) and iTunes where an instant download of the album’s lead single, “333,” is now being offered for those who purchase the album. Stream “333” via YouTube or on Spotify.
Coinciding with the announcement of the new album, drummer Atom Willard will be making nightly appearances this week as part of the 8G Band on Late Night With Seth Meyers. Starting tonight, Monday, July 18, Willard’s guest musician slot can be seen this week through Thursday, July 21 at 12:35/11:35c on NBC.
Additionally, the band has announced its upcoming North American fall tour dates that will both include headline appearances and dates with Bad Religion and Dave Hause. A full listing of dates can be found below with tickets and information on Against Me!’s official website, http://www.againstme.net.
Frontwoman Laura Jane Grace recently announced the release of her upcoming memoir titled TRANNY: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout. Set for release on November 15, 2016 through Hachette Books, TRANNY is a searing account of Grace’s search for identity and true self. The highly anticipated book also reveals the struggles and victories that the artist experienced in her quest for gender transition. Written with Noisey editor Dan Ozzi and illuminated by Grace’s never-before-published journal entries reaching back to childhood, TRANNY is an intensely personal and revelatory look inside her struggles with identity and addiction. Grappling with everything from sex, drugs, failed marriages, music, and soul of a punk rock star, this memoir paints a vivid portrait of one of the most revolutionary transgender icons of our time.
Recorded, mixed and engineered by Marc Jacob Hudson (Taking Back Sunday, Saves The Day) at Rancho Recordo, Shape Shift With Me, Against Me!’s seventh full length album, has the distinction of the first album frontwoman Laura Jane Grace has written truly from the heart, with no metaphorical cloaks cast over the lyrics. It’s an album about love, that deceptively complex emotion we all struggle with yet has somehow eluded most of Grace’s songwriting for the past 20 years.
“Tons of people have written about love. But while love is cliché, it’s infinitely relevant,” Grace says. “For me, having always been in a punk band that was expected to be political, I never felt like I had that option to write about feelings in that way. That’s what I ended up being drawn to this time. It’s writing in a way I thought I could never write before, and not giving a shit about expectations.”
As such, Shape Shift With Me is a loose concept album about traveling the world and falling in and out of love, with Grace serving as the narrator. But even though she was opening herself up to new songwriting topics, she knew what her mission was from the start.
“Is there a record that is about relationships from a trans perspective?” she asks rhetorically. “There needs to be more records about trans rights and everything like that, but feeling like I already did that, I wanted to move on to write commentary on living from a trans perspective. I wanted to write the transgender response to the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main St., Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville and the Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come For Free. All those records are relationship records. There’s been an infinite amount of records talking about what love means from a cisgender perspective. I wanted to present the trans perspective on sex, love and heartbreak.”
With Grace’s new motivation came a new outlook on the band, as well. Previous albums found the songwriting process to be a largely solitary experience, but she embraced the spirit of collaboration for Shape Shift With Me—so much so that when Cody Votolato of the Blood Brothers sent her some demos of songs he was working on for another project, she became inspired and ended up co-writing “Boyfriend” and “Norse Truth,” two of the album’s most memorable tracks, with him.
“It was just about opening up to whatever comes my way karmically,” Grace says. “Whatever everyone in the band is willing to offer, I just wanted to be open to it. I didn’t want it to be like what it was in the past where it may have felt closed. I want it to be different.”
In a career already full of classic punk records, Shape Shift With Me feels like the definitive Against Me! album—it’s poppy and catchy (“Rebecca,” “Suicide Bomber”), aggressive and in-your-face (“ProVision L-3,” “Dead Rats”), sentimental and longing [Crash,” “All This (And More”)]. Moreover, it’s the culmination of four years of existence as Laura Jane Grace—there’s no going back now, so she might as well embrace it.
“While I’ve always wanted the moon and the stars, I have a certain amount of humbleness,” she admits. “I just want to play shows and make records and write songs. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Of course I always want the biggest and best things for those shows and records and songs, but when it comes down to it, I just love doing it. I have no other ambitions or career goals.”
Against Me! will be making the following North American headline appearances as well as touring with Bad Religion and Dave Hause this fall. Dates below with more headline shows to be announced soon.
SEPTEMBER
14 – Grand Rapids, MI – The Stache #
15 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Small’s Theatre #
18 – New Haven, CT – College Street Music Hall #
19 – Boston, MA – Royale #
20 – Portland, ME – Port City Music Hall #
21 – Montreal, QC – Club Soda #
23 – Chicago, IL – Goose Island 312 Block Party
24 – Louisville, KY – Mercury Ballroom #
25 – Indianapolis, IN – Deluxe at Old National Centre #
27 – Northampton, MA – Pearl Street #
28 – Providence, RI – Fete (Lounge) #
30 – Sayreville, NJ – Starland Ballroom *
OCTOBER
01 – Huntington, NY – The Paramount *
03 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza *
04 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza *
05 – Philadelphia, PA – The Fillmore *
06 – Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore Silver Spring *
08 – Charlotte, NC – The Fillmore Charlotte *
09 – Atlanta, GA – The Buckhead Theatre *
11 – Lake Buena Vista, FL – House of Blues-Orlando *
12 – St. Petersburg, FL – Jannus Landing *
14 – Houston, TX – Warehouse Live *
15 – San Antonio, TX – The Aztec Theater *
16 – Dallas, TX – House of Blues-Dallas *
18 – Kansas City, MO – Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland *
20 – Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue *
21 – Las Vegas, NV – The Foundry Hall @ SLS *
24 – Eugene, OR – McDonald Theater *
26 – Seattle, WA – Showbox SoDo *
27 – Portland, OR – Roseland Theatre *
29 – Sacramento, CA – Ace of Spades *
30 – San Francisco, CA – Warfield Theatre *
NOVEMBER
03 – Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theatre *
04 – Hollywood, CA – Hollywood Palladium *
# = headline show
* = w/ Bad Religion, Dave Hause
Shape Shift With Me track listing:
01. ProVision L-3
02. 12:03
03. Boyfriend
04. Crash
05. Delicate, Petite & Other Things I’ll Never Be
06. 333
07. Haunting, Haunted, Haunts
08. Dead Rats
09. Rebecca
10. Norse Truth
11. Suicide Bomber
12. All This (And More)
