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Inout | The cph post entertainment guide
Against Me!
KB18 Wednesday 21:00; Tickets 170kr; www.KB18.net
W
hen Against Me! played a show in Denmark in 2007, the band was fronted by Tommy Gabel. When they return to Copenhagen later this month, Laura Jane Grace may be clutching the microphone while belting out the band’s hits. A line-up change? Well, sort of. After 31 years of struggle with
gender dysphoria, and despite dropping strong hints about his sexuality in songs like ‘The Ocean’ – “And if I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman/ My mother once told me she would have named me Laura” – Gabel finally went public with his gender identity. In a feature published by Rolling Stone in May, Gabel announced to the world that he was embarking upon the first steps to living life as a woman. “I look like a dude and feel like a dude, and it sucks,” Gabel told Rolling Stone. “But eventually I’ll flip, and I’ll present as female.” But this announcement isn’t stopping the band from making music or
20 July - 26 July 2012
prompting discussions about disbandment. If anything, it’s provided Gabel with a brand new theme within the realm of self-discovery to explore as a songwriter. Against Me! began recording a concept album about a transgender prostitute in February. The writing process for the album, called Transgender Dysphoria Blues, provided Gabel with the impetus necessary to make the announcement to his bandmates, his friends and family, and to Rolling Stone’s readership. “I think that pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is always good for creativity,” Gabel told MTV News. “I’ve never been more further pushed
out of my comfort zone than I am right now in my life.” Against Me!’s first album to hit Billboard charts, Searching for a Former Clarity (2005), was praised by Punk News for lyrics which addressed “the effects of politics on real people”. With lyrics like “Confessing childhood secrets of dressing up in women’s clothes” and “Will everyone you ever meet or love/ Be just a relationship based on a false presumption?”, the title track also hints at Gabel’s conflict of identity. Their 2007 release, New Wave, was named the year’s best album by Spin magazine. Though Transgender Dysphoria Blues might credit Laura Jane Grace
as songwriter, vocalist and guitarist, Against Me!’s trademark punk sound with lyrics that unapologetically confront any topic, pleasant or not, isn’t going anywhere. Against Me! fans will flood the floors of KB18 expecting to hear songs about politics and identity performed by a tight punk outfit, complete with crazy stage antics and the general insanity that has become almost synonymous with rock concerts. They won’t be disappointed. As Gabel told Rolling Stone, “However fierce our band was in the past, imagine me, six-foot-two, in heels, f*cking screaming into someone’s face.” Shandana Mufti
Punk Rock Meets
Transgender Blues