Against Me!

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.”

Bleached

Back to basics. Take your time. Guitars and golden noise. Meet Bleached, two sisters from LA creating rough-hewed, high-collared, melodic Rock & Roll. Formerly part of Mika Miko, Jessica and Jennifer Clavin were best known for their freewheeling '77 punk and riot girl lawlessness. In Bleached, they share the same slant towards the hard-edged, but instead veer towards a more vintage ensemble of Ramones bubble-gum, Merle Haggard country, and 60s psychedelic rock. "Months after beloved L.A. art-punkers and Smell disciples Mika Miko called it a day in late 2009, sisters Jessica and Jennifer Clavin dove right back into writing and recording together as Bleached. While they've definitely taken their sound in another direction (splenetic guitar moves have been swapped out in favor of softer, strummier, far stickier fare), the energy's not so different at all." --Spin.com

The Dirty Nil

The Dirty Nil play rock and roll. Loud, distorted, and out of control, they play like it’s a fever they’re trying to sweat out. Reveling in the din of distorted guitars, pounding drums, and desperately howled vocals, the Hamilton Ontario three-piece makes music for turntables and hi-fi’s - music for dive bars and house parties - for beer drinking and joint smoking - for road trips and barbecues - for fighting and yelling and shouting and singing and screaming and howling - for sweating and bleeding - trying and failing and trying again anyways. Gravel-in-your guts, spit-in-your-eye, staggering, bloodthirsty rock and roll. They have two 7"s available that capture the snarl and destructive noise they create. The Dirty Nil play rock and roll - cause they couldn’t do a damn thing else if they tried.