[protected-iframe id=”bdfd565aa40196c0c57447f4c843f885-60970621-76566046″ info=”https://www.npr.org/player/embed/491518850/492980140″ width=”100%” height=”290″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”yes”]
Yes, Laura Jane Grace made excellent, furious album out of her transition to living life as female on Against Me!’s last album Transgender Dysphoria Blues. But being transgender doesn’t singularly define Grace’s life, and Against Me! fans know it can’t possibly define her band’s music. Grace has turned her hyper-literate, multisyllabic rage toward love and relationships in the band’s latest album Shape Shift with Me.
Of course, anything Laura writes is going to come from the perspective of a trans woman, but she wanted to move beyond the basics in her latest release.
“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,” she told Rolling Stone. “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.”
We’ve already heard a few promising cuts in “333,” “Haunting, Haunted, Haunts” and “Crash,” but now Shape Shift is available to stream in its entirety via NPR First Listen. Give it a spin up top before the album drops on September 16.
