Presented by Bowery Boston Doors: 7:00 pm / Show: 8:00 pm Tickets on
sale Fri 5/17 at 10am! Tickets available at AXS.COM, or by phone at
855-482-2090. No service charge on tickets purchased in person at The
Sinclair Box Office Wednesdays-Saturdays 12-7PM. Please note: this
show is 18+ with valid ID. Patrons under 18 admitted if accompanied by
a parent . Opening acts and set times are subject to change without
notice. All sales are final unless a show is postponed or canceled.
All bags larger than 12 inches x 12 inches, backpacks, professional
cameras, video equipment, large bags, luggage and like articles are
strictly prohibited from the venue. Please make sure necessary
arrangements are made ahead of time. All patrons subject to search
upon venue entry. *** *** Against Me! Website Facebook Twitter AGAINST
ME! – SHAPE SHIFT WITH ME Laura Jane Grace – vocals/guitar //
James Bowman – guitar/vocals // Inge Johansson – bass // Atom
Willard – drums Four years is a measurement of time that America has
used for centuries to indicate change. Presidential terms last four
years; high school diplomas and college degrees typically take four
years apiece, too. It’s not an arbitrary thing, either: It typically
takes that much time from the declaration of something changing for it
to actually change. Meet Laura Jane Grace. Four years ago, the Against
Me! frontwoman came out as transgender; 18 months later, she released
the band’s sixth album, the fiery Transgender Dysphoria Blues, one
which she began working on before her transition and helped document
the struggles she was facing. It was an intensely personal record that
took on a life of its own, connecting with thousands of new listeners
drawn to Grace’s honesty and complexity while still pleasing Against
Me!’s dedicated fanbase. Now, four years after Grace’s public
reintroduction, Against Me! is ready to release their new album, Shape
Shift With Me, September 16 on Total Treble. While much has changed in
the lives of Grace and her bandmates—guitarist James Bowman, bassist
Inge Johansson and drummer Atom Willard—in that time period, it’s
clear that those intervening years have done wonders for creativity.
“Everything with Shape Shift With Me has been really about keeping
momentum going,” she says. “In between every tour we did for
Transgender Dysphoria Blues, I would have a couple songs I had written
and we would demo them. At the end of two years of touring, we had an
album ready to record. Usually, you come off of touring for a record
and you’re back at square one. But this was so fully formed it felt
like there was no choice but to go ahead and record the songs.”
Shape Shift With Me has the distinction of the first album Grace has
written truly from the heart, with no metaphorical cloaks cast over
the lyrics. It’s an album about love, that deceptively complex
emotion we all struggle with yet has somehow eluded most of Grace’s
songwriting for the past 20 years. “Tons of people have written
about love. But while love is cliché, it’s infinitely relevant. For
me, having always been in a punk band that was expected to be
political, I never felt like I had that option to write about feelings
in that way. That’s what I ended up being drawn to this time. It’s
writing in a way I thought I could never write before, and not giving
a shit about expectations.” As such, Shape Shift With Me is a loose
concept album about traveling the world and falling in and out of
love, with Grace serving as the narrator. But even though she was
opening herself up to new songwriting topics, she knew what her
mission was from the start. “Is there a record that is about
relationships from a trans perspective?” she asks rhetorically.
“There needs to be more records about trans rights and everything
like that, but feeling like I already did that, I wanted to move on to
write commentary on living from a trans perspective. 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. 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.” With Grace’s new motivation came a new
outlook on the band, as well. Previous albums found the songwriting
process to be a largely solitary experience, but she embraced the
spirit of collaboration for Shape Shift With Me—so much so that when
Cody Votolato of the Blood Brothers sent her some demos of songs he
was working on for another project, she became inspired and ended up
co-writing “Boyfriend” and “Norse Truth,” two of the album’s
most memorable tracks, with him. “It was just about opening up to
whatever comes my way karmically,” Grace says. “Whatever everyone
in the band is willing to offer, I just wanted to be open to it. I
didn’t want it to be like what it was in the past where it may have
felt closed. I want it to be different.” In a career already full of
classic punk records, Shape Shift With Me feels like the definitive
Against Me! album—it’s poppy and catchy (“Rebecca,” “Suicide
Bomber”), aggressive and in-your-face (“ProVision L-3,” “Dead
Rats”), sentimental and longing (“Crash,” “All This And
More”). Moreover, it’s the culmination of four years of existence
as Laura Jane Grace—there’s no going back now, so she might as
well embrace it. “While I’ve always wanted the moon and the stars,
I have a certain amount of humbleness,” she admits. “I just want
to play shows and make records and write songs. That’s what I’ve
always wanted to do. Of course I always want the biggest and best
things for those shows and records and songs, but when it comes down
to it, I just love doing it. I have no other ambitions or career
goals. “David Bowie put out 27 full-lengths. Prince put out 39
full-lengths,” Grace remarks. “That is so inspiring to
me—working, creating art, creating records and let everyone else
sort it out. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do and that’s
what I will keep on doing.” *** Cursive Website Facebook Twitter
Over the past two decades, Cursive has become known for writing smart,
tightly woven concept albums where frontman Tim Kasher turns his
unflinching gaze on specific, oftentimes challenging themes, and
examines them with an incisively brutal honesty. 2000’s Domestica
dealt with divorce; 2003’s The Ugly Organ tackled art, sex, and
relationships; 2006’s Happy Hollow skewered organized religion;
2009’s Mama, I’m Swollen grappled with the human condition and
social morality; and 2012’s I Am Gemini explored the battle between
good and evil. But the band’s remarkable eighth full-length,
Vitriola, required a different approach — one less rigidly themed
and more responsive as the band struggles with existentialism veering
towards nihilism and despair; the ways in which society, much like a
writer, creates and destroys; and an oncoming dystopia that feels
eerily near at hand. Cursive has naturally developed a pattern of
releasing new music every three years, creating records not out of
obligation, but need, with the mindset that each record could
potentially be their last. 2015 came and went, however, and the band
remained silent for their longest period to date. But the members of
Cursive have remained busy with solo records, a movie (the
Kasher-penned and directed No Resolution), and running businesses (the
band collectively owns and operates hometown Omaha’s mainstay
bar/venue, O’Leaver’s). The band even launched their own label, 15
Passenger, through which they’re steadily reissuing their remastered
back catalogue, as well as new albums by Kasher, Campdogzz, and David
Bazan and Sean Lane. And like many others, the band members have been
caught up in the inescapable state of confusion and instability that
plagues their home country, and seems to grow more chaotic with each
passing day. Which brings us to 2018 and Vitriola. For the first time
since Happy Hollow, the album reunites Kasher, guitarist/singer Ted
Stevens and bassist Matt Maginn with founding drummer Clint Schnase,
as well as co-producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, M. Ward, Jenny Lewis)
at ARC Studios in Omaha. They’re joined by Patrick Newbery on keys
(who’s been a full-time member for years) and touring mainstay Megan
Siebe on cello. Schnase and Maginn are in rare form, picking up right
where they left off with a rhythmic lockstep of viscera-vibrating bass
and toms, providing a foundation for Kasher and Stevens’
intertwining guitars and Newbery and Siebe’s cinematic flourishes.
The album runs the sonic gamut between rich, resonant melodicism,
Hitchcockian anxiety, and explosive catharsis — and no Cursive album
would be complete without scream-along melodies and lyrics that, upon
reflection, make for unlikely anthems. There’s a palpable unease
that wells beneath Vitriola’s simmering requiems and fist-shakers.
Fiery opener “Free To Be or Not To Be You and Me” reflects the
album’s core: a search for meaning that keeps coming up empty, and
finding the will to keep going despite the fear of a dark future. The
album directs frustration and anger at not only modern society and the
universe at large, but also inward towards ourselves. On “Under the
Rainbow,” disquiet boils into rage that indicts the complacency of
the privileged classes; “Ghost Writer” has a catchy pulse that
belies Kasher chastising himself for writing about writing; and
“Noble Soldier/Dystopian Lament” is a haunting look at potential
societal collapse that provides little in the way of hope but balances
beauty and horror on the head of a pin. Vitriola raises a stark
question: is this it? Is everything simply broken, leaving us hopeless
and nihilistic? Maybe not. There can be reassurance in commiseration,
and the album is deeply relatable: Cursive may not be offering the
answers, but there is hope in knowing you’re not alone in the chaos.
*** Dilly Dally Website Facebook Twitter
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24/10/2019 Last update