Attention teenage anarchists: Against Me! are back. The band have announced that their seventh album, Shape Shift With Me, the follow-up to 2014’s pivotal Transgender Dysphoria Blues, will arrive on September 16. That’s two months before lead singer Laura Jane Grace’s debut memoir, Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, sees its release, meaning fall is looking kick ass. In a statement, Grace describes the album as a response to centuries of music about straight, cisgender love and an exploration of where her experiences as a transgender woman fit into the canon:
“Is there a record that is about relationships from a trans perspective? 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.â€
The album’s first single, “333,†speaks to intimacy and what prevents people, trans or not, from achieving it. “You should’ve been there by my side to see it all,†Grace growls, regretting not giving enough of herself to her loved one during her darkest times. Ultimately, she accepts that that’s the only way to let love in: “All the devils that you don’t know / Can all come along for the ride / I wanna be as close as I can get to you.â€