★★★★★
Of the ten songs on Against Me!'s album Transgender Dysphoria Blues choosing the song "Unconditional Love" to have its own single was a bit curious at first. It's a bit "poppier" than most of the songs on the album, let alone the band's whole discography. Plus there are some awesome, hard-hitting jams that would make fantastic singles like the title track, "Black Me Out," "True Trans Soul Rebel" and "FuckMyLife666...
- www.punknews.org
2014-06-11
★★★★★
Part of you tries to be objective about the fact that Tom James Gabel is now Laura Jane Grace, and just go about the business of Against Me!'s sleek, crunching nu-punk with angst-laden lyrics. But, as the record's title suggests, it's not something meant to be ignored and, thankfully, Grace is in-your-face with an aggressively told tale of selfhood (to say nothing of the heartbreak of loss) at its most exposed and anthemic...
- filtermagazine.com
2014-03-08
★★★★★
Early in "I Still Love You Julie," the best song from Against Me!'s scrappily charming debut LP, Reinventing Axl Rose (2002), frontwoman Laura Jane Grace tells of an evening where she "sang along to the songs I never had the courage to write." Known as Tom Gabel when she sang that line, Grace publicly came out as transgender in 2012, detailing her lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria to Rolling Stone in a moving, candid interview. Against Me...
- cokemachineglow.com
2014-02-19
★★★★★
This is the Against Me! album that everyone has been holding their breath for ever since their singer Laura Jane Grace bravely shared her true soul. I doubt any fans of the band knew what to expect. While she is still that same person who wrote previous Against Me! albums, now that she was being true to herself, maybe her music would change with it. Instead of something shocking, Against Me...
- tangiblesounds.com
2014-02-07
★★★★★
Capsule Reviews: Against Me, Arcade Fire, Angel Haze
Against Me! - Transgender Dysmorphia Blues
Plain and simple, Transgender Dysmorphia Blues is Against Me!'s best album since 2002?s Reinventing Axl Rose. It's also their most emotionally-cutting. On the production side, the album is unrelentingly catchy and propulsive, like decades of angst and suppression unleashing itself in half an hour...
- prettymuchamazing.com
2014-01-31
★★★★★
In the 1992 comedy, Wayne's World, Wayne and Garth are asked by a smarmy TV executive (played by Rob Lowe), how they felt about making some changes to their namesake program. "Change?" said Garth, "We fear Change." The same could be said for punk fans. Change isn't always embraced and it is sometimes flat-out rejected. Against Me...
- www.punknews.org
2014-01-28
★★★★★
When a pop-punk song is as good as 'Black Me Out', the final track on Against Me's sixth studio album Transgender Dysphoria Blues, it turns fantasy to life. Its components become satisfactions: the spiky, masterfully revealed guitar riff and marching drumbeat take the song's desires - Laura Jane Grace's protestation that she will never "talk that away again", or "know people like that anymore" - and fulfil them...
- thequietus.com
2014-02-01
★★★★★
Tweet Does God Bless Your Transsexual Heart? A lot has happened for punk staples Against Me! since the release of their last record in 2010. Along with splitting from their first and only mainstream record label and making some large changes to their lineup, singer and lead guitarist Laura Jane Grace came out as a transgender woman, announcing the beginning of her transition. While much of the music related to her transition and identity has been performed by Grace as a solo act, Against Me...
- www.mxdwn.com
2014-01-25
★★★★★
It's been easy to disagree about the fluid and often conflicting ideology of Against Me! over the years. They were born to the Gainesville, Fla., scene as anarcho-punks, wearing black and fully DIY; NOFX's Fat Mike offered the band some money and off they went to his Fat Wreck label, a farm league for the majors where bands could slug Bro Hymns to the kids at Warped Tour...
- pitchfork.com
2014-01-24
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