Laura Jane Grace
‘Goddammit, We’re Gonna Take This Somewhere!’: The Oral History of Against Me!’s Reinventing Axl Rose
It’s October 28, 2008, and 18-year-old me is roughly third in line for Against Me!’s show at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. It’s the last West Coast stop of their fall tour behind New Wave, and my dorm neighbor has kindly driven me from the Inland Empire to the venue (I didn’t have a car for my first semester of college) hours before doors opened, sticking around to see a band she’s never heard of. As I sip my original recipe Four Loko (I did have a fake ID my first semester of college) and avoid making eye contact with the handful of other punk kids who don’t have to work on a Tuesday afternoon, the skinny kid in front of me strikes up a conversation. Frankly, I wish I could remember what he said, but here’s the takeaway: His name was Pat, and he needed my help starting a mutiny as soon as t...
5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Laura Jane Grace
Name Laura Jane Grace Best known for My sense of humor and comedic timing. Current city Chicago, IL Really want to be in In my experience, no matter where I go there I am. Every place is what you make of it. I just would like to be with family and friends. That’s the best place to be. Excited about I’m excited about getting out on the road and playing shows. Have now released a full-length LP and an EP over the course of the pandemic. Lots of new songs to play live for the first time and also lots of old songs to play that feel new again too! My current music collection has a lot of Variety! I listen to everything! And a little bit of I don’t know how to answer this question. I just have a lot of records. You wouldn’t expect me to listen to I ...
Laura Jane Grace Details Canadian Headlining Tour Next March
Laura Jane Grace has just announced a headlining, 14-date Canadian jaunt. The tour will run throughout the entire month of March next year. The Emmy-nominated artist, author, and activist will have support from Bristol-based songwriter Lande Hekt and punk duo Mobina Galore. Their first stop in Canada is on March 5 at Le National in Montreal, which will follow several of Grace’s previously scheduled performances in the U.S. Tickets for her Canadian run go on sale at 1 pm. EST this Friday, November 26. Grace’s upcoming embark is in support of her newest work, At War With The Silverfish, which was released on September 22. The seven-track EP follows her full-length, 2020 record Stay Alive. “These are songs of late night madness and loneliness,” Grace said in a statement of her new E...
Laura Jane Grace Surprise Released Her New EP Because Nothing Is Normal Anymore Anyway
Laura Jane Grace released a new EP today, but you wouldn’t know it if you weren’t paying attention. At a point in time where society, punk rock, and everything in between is more online than ever before, Grace stealth-dropped At War With The Silverfish (via Polyvinyl Records) like her fellow cultural icon, Beyoncé, did for her 2013 self-titled album. On one hand, it takes a certain amount of courage and understanding of your fan base to release a new project without any kind of prior promotion or announcement (beyond the occasional cryptic tweet). On the other, it’s not like anyone really has a “How to Release an Album During a Global Pandemic” playbook drafted up yet, so why not just go with it? “These are certainly unprecedented times that we’re living in, so the normal way of putting ou...
30 Artists Reflect on 30 Years of Pearl Jam’sTen
The story has been told thousands of times, but it bears repeating: Pearl Jam should never have happened. The ’90s had just begun. In March 1990, the promising Seattle rock band Mother Love Bone was about to unveil their debut album. But on the eve of the release, the band’s lead singer, Andrew Wood, died tragically of a heroin overdose. His band members, guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament were blind-sided, devastated, and decided to end the band. Over the next few months, Gossard slowly found his way back to music. He made a few demos that landed in the hands of a surfer from San Diego via Chicago who got them from ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons. The surfer’s name was Eddie Vedder. The songs he sent back? “Alive,” “Once,” and “Footsteps.” Pearl Jam formed around t...
Laura Jane Grace Announces Live Concert at Four Seasons Total Landscaping With Brendan Kelly of the Lawrence Arms
While Laura Jane Grace has undoubtedly played some legendary venues during both her solo career and with Against Me!, none have been quite like where she plays her next show. As her only date ahead of September’s Punk Rock Bowling festival, the iconic punk rocker will be headlining at arguably the most famous landscaping shop in American history: Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Along with the Lawrence Arms’ Brendan Kelly, Grace will be the biggest name to appear at the Philadelphia-based landscaping business this year, and it’s likely to be a very different (and more intentional) experience compared to when disgraced former attorney Rudy Giuliani put the venue on the map last November. “This will be the first and last time Brendan and I will play in front of a landscaping company and we pr...
Laura Jane Grace on Staying Alive and Staring Into the Abyss
There are a number of pre-pandemic luxuries that Laura Jane Grace misses during these precarious times. But the glaring absence of live shows – and the resulting human connection – has left a particularly large hole in her bleeding singer-songwriter heart. “I miss it a lot,” the Against Me! singer tells SPIN from her snowy Chicago apartment. “I miss so many different aspects of it. I just miss being part of a team…I miss the group spirit of my band, whether that’s all of us on a bus or all of us in an airport waiting for a plane, or loading in in the morning or loading out – the group experience.” The story of Against Me! is a dramatic and inspiring one, perfectly summed up by the crowds of their memorable live shows, where you can rub shoulders with both punks and rock listeners who...
Laura Jane Grace Drops Surprise LP, Stay Alive, Produced by Steve Albini
Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace surprise-released Stay Alive — her first-ever solo outing — at midnight Oct. 1. The 14-song LP, produced by Steve Albini, “takes all her pent-up fears, anger, and anxiety and releases it, like an olive branch to the weary listeners who are feeling those exact same ways,” says the album’s bio on Polyvinyl Records’ site. Stay Alive is now streaming everywhere and can be pre-ordered at the Polyvinyl Store; physical copies will be available Dec. 11. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, Against Me! kicked off a tour that was supposed to see the lineup joining with Baroness in May. Of course, the tour — along with every other one in the world — was canceled. What did Grace do? “I sat around for a month-and-a-half at a home ju...
Ben Gibbard, Laura Jane Grace, El-P, Others to Help Save Stereogum With Cover Songs
Ben Gibbard, Laura Jane Grace, and El-P are among the artists contributing to a new compilation called Save Stereogum: An ‘00s Covers Comp, which, as the title implies, is a a fundraiser to help the long-beloved online publication, which went full independent earlier this year, stay up and running. The list of musicians contributing covers of songs from 2000 to 2009 is staggering: The National, Dirty Projectors, Car Seat Headrest, Soccer Mommy, Sharon Van Etten. Ty Segall, Hamilton Leithauser and Mac DeMarco among others. You can find the list all 44 contributing artists here. The choices of songs being covered will be “a surprise.” (Also, check out their amazing t-shirts for sale, which parody the Stooges, Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, and others.) “We knew building a sustainable operatio...
