Against Me! at House of Vans, Brooklyn

Laura Jane Grace

Laura Jane Grace was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, and moved frequently between military bases due to her father's military career. Living in Italy when she was eight years old, Grace bought her first guitar from a mail order catalog with money saved from mowing lawns. Grace initially took guitar lessons from an army officer's wife, but ended up teaching herself how to play. When she was 12 years old, Grace's parents divorced, and Grace moved with her mother and brother to Naples, Florida. Grace played in numerous bands throughout her adolescence. Moving at age 18 to Gainesville, Florida, she began performing as Against Me!, either alone on an acoustic guitar or with a friend drumming on pickle buckets. Within a few years, Against Me! officially became a punk quartet. Against Me! presently consists of Grace, guitarist James Bowman, bassist Andrew Seward and drummer Atom Willard. In 2012, Grace publicly came out as a transgender woman, a transition that was explored on the band's 2014 album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues. The band's seventh and most recent album, Shape Shift with Me, was released in 2016. Since 2013, Grace has lived in Chicago, Illinois.

With no new Against Me! album to promote tonight at the House of Vans' House Parties series, the band performed a retrospective featuring two to five songs from each of its seven albums. Launching with "I Was a Teenage Anarchist" and "White Crosses," Against Me! immediately established its true colors as an angry, anarchistic punk band. The band's high-momentum punk slammed hard with hardly a pause. Every high-octane song was a massive adrenaline rush, with only a very few songs played at a toe-tapping pace. Gripping vocals, thrashing guitars, and anthemic choruses were tempered by melodic phrasing that generated shout-alongs, fist-pumping, moshing and crowd surfing from the audience. If anyone was looking for a modern punk rock experience, this was it.

Visit Against Me! at www.againstme.net.

Setlist:

1. I Was a Teenage Anarchist
2. White Crosses
3. Crash
4. Don't Lose Touch
5. New Wave
6. Piss and Vinegar
7. I Still Love You Julie
8. Reinventing Axl Rose
9. Turn Those Clapping Hands into Angry Balled Fists
10. T.S.R. (This Shit Rules)
11. Cliché Guevara
12. From Her Lips to God's Ears (The Energizer)
13. Haunting, Haunted, Haunts
14. Pretty Girls (The Mover)
15. Miami
16. Joy
17. Transgender Dysphoria Blues
18. Walking Is Still Honest
19. Pints of Guinness Make You Strong
20. True Trans Soul Rebel

Encore:

1. Going to Georgia (The Mountain Goats cover)
2. Two Coffins
3. Up the Cuts
4. Black Me Out
5. We Laugh at Danger (And Break All the Rules)