Against Me! - Shape Shift With Me

Rating:

Against Me! aren’t simply another good band with another good album, they’re a voice we need.

Against Me! are a very important band. It’s not simply Laura Jane Grace’s status as a legitimate icon, but what they have to say. With ‘Shape Shift With Me’, they’ve delivered an album that is every inch as vital as it is great.

Opening with a blast at invasive airport security scanners, ‘Provision L-3’, it’s an album that sounds both vine fresh and timeless. Even when hints of other peers appear, they become part of Against Me!’s identity, as stand out ‘Boyfriends’’ assimilation of Weezer’s perfect guitar pop proves.

For all the attention Grace rightfully receives, Against Me! are far from a one woman band. Guitarist James Bowman shows his chops brilliantly on ‘12:03’ while bassist Inge Johannson and drummer Atom Willard take it to the disco on the brilliant ‘Delicate, Petite & Other Things I’ll Never Be’. Still, it would be folly to suggest that LJG’s lyrical barbs aren’t the steel holding ‘Shape Shift With Me’ tall.

In a world of all you can eat, track by track, easily disposable sound-bites, Against Me! aren’t simply another good band with another good album, they’re a voice we need. Stephen Ackroyd