By this stage, anyone who considers themselves even a casual fan of Against Me! knows the band’s story.
The group were unsung heroes for years, only cracking the mainstream after some time, weathering cries of “sellout” along the way and eventually finding an entirely new audience thanks to the personal journey of their lead singer and figurehead, Laura Jane Grace. Grace was 31 years old when she announced to her bandmates that she was a transgender person and would be spending the rest of her life identifying as a woman – and it’s a moment that has stuck with everyone present in that room.
“In that moment, I’m sure I looked pretty dumbfounded and pretty surprised,” says James Bowman, who has been Against Me!’s guitarist since 2001 and has played on all seven of its studio albums. “Beyond that, however, my primary concerns were what had to be done in order to keep the band going. I just wanted to help – I’m the kind of person that tries to fix everything. We were able to continue doing this, and we’re still here. I count myself so lucky for that. It’s definitely been a growing experience, and I think it’s great. Life is crazy sometimes, and you’ve just gotta roll with it.”
With the release of 2014’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues, the band – Grace, Bowman, bassist Inge Johansson and drummer Atom Willard – toured the world, appeared on TV and scored some of their highest chart positions and career-best reviews. They’ve acted on this momentum with Shape Shift With Me, out now.
Consider Shape Shift as an equal and opposite reaction to Transgender – where the latter was a crushing, cathartic diary of anger and confusion, the former is an album that specifically deals with falling in and out of love, albeit one that avoids the trite boy-meets-girl heteronormativite and cisgendered narrative. “This is definitely a snappier record,” says Bowman.
“The subject matter is a lot less dark, and it’s not like we were going through song by song to make sure that was the case. That just ended up being the kind of record that we as a band wanted to make. I don’t know if it was conscientious or not – that’s just how it happened. I’d say that most of our records have ended up with a through-line of sorts. Laura wanted to make a record that was focused on love and relationships – it’s a record about trying to be happy. Maybe that’s where the upbeat nature of the music comes from: who can say?”
The band have released two singles from Shape Shift With Me thus far – the stomping ‘333’ and the ridiculously-catchy ‘Crash’. The two music videos that have been released for each track could not be more different: ‘333’ stars Orange Is The New Black actress Natasha Lyonne in a surrealist ’60s dream sequence, directed by Say Anything star Ione Skye. ‘Crash’ on the other hand, runs for a single shot and is a delightfully cheap clip in which the band don KISS makeup as they do battle with a completely unexplained alien. If that wasn’t enough, Bowman even throws in a Star Wars homage through a clever concoction for his trusty guitar.
“When we were setting up for that ‘Crash’ video, the set designers had all of these props that they had bought at a local toy store,” he explains. “One of those things was a lightsaber. I knew I wanted to use it the second that I saw it – the only challenge was I couldn’t pull it out of nowhere while I was playing guitar. I took the lightsaber apart and wired it onto my guitar neck. Somehow, I was able to turn my guitar into a sci-fi weapon.”
Sadly, Bowman is at pains to reveal you won’t be seeing the saber at any shows soon. “Unfortunately, it’s very hard to actually play guitar when you’ve got that thing strapped on,” he says. “Miming’s fine, but playing is something else entirely. It also won’t fit inside my guitar case. Maybe I’ll try again: I just need a bit of downtime and a soldering iron.”
Although Grace is the sole constant of the band, having started it on her own as a teenager in the late ’90s, Bowman has served alongside her for 15 years and been a part of most of the band’s incarnations. The recent renaissance period Against Me! have gone through is not something that’s lost on him – and nor is it something that he takes for granted. “I’ve been here for a while,” he says.
“When you’re first starting a band, you set out to do what you do really well. You want to do it to the best and biggest of its possibilities. We’ve been lucky to see a bit of growth with every record – and with the last record, the base of people that listen to this band expanded out in a big way. We not only had all these new people coming to shows and hearing us for the first time, but we also had people that used to listen coming back around and discovering us again. I think it’s awesome – I’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years now, and the more people that are listening then the more we can keep this thing going and going.”
[Against Me! photo by Kara Smarsh]
Against Me!’sShape Shift With Me is out now through Total Treble.
