[album] Against Me! – New Wave (CD 2007)

I remember seeing Against Me! with less than 100 people in the back of the HobGoblin pub in Brighton, for free. The sound was beyond atrocious (it normally is) and the people I went with didn’t get it and fucked off to another pub, but I didn’t care; I was down the front screaming myself hoarse to ‘Reinventing Axl Rose’, ‘Baby, I’m An Anarchist!’ and other songs off their first few releases, along with a large handful of other sweaty people.

Against Me! – Don’t Loose Touch

I then saw them, a few years later, with a full crowd at the well-missed Freebutt (again in Brighton): everybody screaming themselves hoarse this time; falling over each other; and generally going mad with enthusiasm and passion. This was it: this was what DIY music was about. Singing like there was nowhere else in the world we’d rather be, and there wasn’t. There really wasn’t. Everything you heard in Reinventing Axl Rose was true. It was less about the songs, – undoubtedly brilliant anthems – and more about the heart the band played with and the passion which the lyrics conjured up.

A few years, two good albums, a DVD on Fat Wreck, some coloured vinyl and a new record deal with Sire/Warner Brothers later, the doubt had more than set in: its arse is well indented in the comfy chair. The result?

Against Me! aren’t a punk band anymore. They may have started that way but they’re more Franz Ferdinand than Billy Bragg now. New Wave is an excursion in American pop rock and it’s a fine one; it’s good even. Songs like the self-reflective driving ‘Up The Cuts’; the tale of destruction that is ‘Thrash Unreal’; the most straightforward AM!-sounding lead single ‘White People for Peace’ and cynical cheesy chanting disco of ‘Stop!’ are great. It’s not the revolution they sounded like just a year or two ago: it’s older, it’s more cynical, it’s not as innocent.

I’ve also got nothing against bands growing and changing. I love it: I think the lack of bands growing is generally a problem within any aspect of a music scene – a sound is established and it stays that way for 20+ years whilst life moves on without them. It’s boring: a movement has no worth if it doesn’t change, evolve to tackle the times (take note Fundamentalists). AM!, then, have grown and changed with the times: with record contracts; production values and stages heights. But with that increasing of budget, something has gone. There is no urgency or heart felt anthems, no off-kilter or ground breaking moments. There are still good songs here and therefore AM! still has a worth as a rock band.

The lyricism of Tom Gabel seems to have gone from revolution-screaming, poetic Billy Bragg-ish moments with politics and honesty to a mocking, self-examination of what the band and the music industry mean. The result of the change in lyrical content (a result of success, I suspect) have turned the lyrics from reflecting an every-person to only reflecting the band, making the band seem ever isolated.

It all makes me think of what CIV sang in Gorilla Biscuits’ ‘New Direction: “Hats off to bands that change. Good luck, go your own way. Why play for us if your heart’s not in it?” No hard feelings to Against Me!, they’re just not ours anymore.