Laura Jane Grace: Stay Alive | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Laura Jane Grace had been writing for a new album by her punk band Against Me!. But as it has for so many musicians, a pandemic intervened and put the brakes on the album. Rather than sit on the songs, Grace decided to record Stay Alive - a sparse, mostly acoustic half hour album, released with no advance promo.

Since the last Against Me! record Shape Shift With Me came out in 2016, there has been another album under Laura Jane’s own name - though that was a full band affair that sounded much more like her usual band, at least as it sounds these days. Many old fans will welcome a return to an unplugged sound, given the band’s first recordings were thrashed out on an acoustic guitar – records that were hugely influential on a global scene of folk punk.

To be honest, Stay Alive doesn’t sound much like those old records from two decades ago. When she croons “Wish I was going someplace tropical, wish I was going to Portugal” over plucked guitar, it’s a world away from that desperate thrash of “if this GM van don’t make it across the state line, we might as well lie down and die”.

But then change is part of getting older, isn’t it? Laura Jane Grace’s career has taken her fans on more of a musical journey than most – from folk punk thrash to sleek modern rock, from the “basements and bookstores” of the DIY punk scene to major labels and concert arenas. Not to mention the significant personal change of a gender transition. Laura may have copped the accusation of selling out from a few old punks, but her music has always contained enough authenticity to carry fans with her, even as she went from Baby I’m An Anarchist to I Was A Teenage Anarchist.

So there’s something satisfying about the cyclical nature of time that brings us back to an acoustic record and able to analyse what has changed and what has stayed the same. Mostly the desperate vocal howl of those early records is gone, though occasionally there is a bit of a snarl like on Please Leave. There remains a bit of political consciousness, as on Hanging Tree; and plenty of open personal confessions. To be honest, even as a young adult Laura was a pretty cynical lyricist, so it may be that age has made her a bit more positive when you have her opening the album with “I don’t know the source of my faith, but I know I will be full again” and closing it with “fight against the hopelessness, keep rising up til the pain is gone”.

Overall, I wouldn’t say this is a great album. Few of the songs are especially memorable, they were presumably waiting to be fleshed out by the full band. The lyrics too have a vagueness about them that don’t quite cut through to have the same impact that some of her best over the years have.

Still, it’s nice to hear something new from someone I’ve listened to literally since I was in high school. We’ve both come a long way since then, and it seems fitting that the album’s closing track, from which the title is taken, is called Old Friend. Catching up with an old friend is a bit what listening to this album is like. We might not have everything in common we once did, but that punk spirit is still burning. Laura Jane Grace has stayed alive, and I’m thankful she has.

- Andy Paine.