Because of the Shame: Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! - Part 4

2007–2011: Up the Cuts
Originally published May 23rd, 2014 by Flink (Offline)

In 2007, Against Me! released their fourth studio record, New Wave, with producer Butch Vig, famous for his work with Nirvana, Garbage, the Smashing Pumpkins and Foo Fighters. The band was gaining mainstream exposure, and at the time, Gabel was engaged to his future wife Heather Hannoura, who he had met in the summer of 2006 while touring with Alkaline Trio. Gabel had sworn off cross dressing, saying in the Rolling Stone interview that “you go through periods of binging and purging…I was like, ‘That’s it, I’m getting rid of all this. I’m male, and that’s it.’”

His feelings of gender dysphoria were becoming less extreme in the light of his new found love, finding his thoughts “completely consumed” by the relationship. The lyrics on New Wave also went through a change, reflecting a certain new-found optimism and clarity. “Stop” turned the anti-establishment shouts found on previous records on its head, now expressing the importance of voting and having a say in your government, and “Borne On the FM Waves” was written about his relationship with Hannoura. In an interview with Songfacts.com, he stated “I was really not into the idea of falling in love, I fought it real hard. The song is about that moment that I just kind of surrendered to it, surrendered to her. Uh, vomit right?”

“Thrash Unreal” the albums lead single, tells the story of a woman who’s grown up partying and ends up “out of step with the style,” finding herself too old for her lifestyle. (“When people see the track marks on her arms she know what they’re thinking,” “You reach a point where there’s not a lie in the world that you can use to make the boys believe you’re still in your twenties,” “No mother ever dreams that her daughters going to grow up to be a junkie.”) Ultimately, this woman feels content with her choices. Gabel sings, “And if she had to live it all over again, you know she wouldn’t change anything for the world” as the song closes. Whether or not the lyrics are self-reflective is a bit ambiguous, but Gabel wanted to cross dress in the music video. The idea, however, was eventually scrapped.

New Wave also ended with the song “The Ocean,” which featured Gabel’s most revealing lyrics to date. About midway though the song, he sings “And if I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman. My mother once told me she would have named me Laura.” Gabel believed that lyric would have completely outed him, but few suspect a thing. In the Rolling Stone story, the band’s manager, Jordan Kleeman admitted, “must have listened to him sing that song 500 times. And I never thought twice.” Butch Vig approached Gabel about the line, but according to the Rolling Stone interview, Gabel laughed it off, saying, “I was stoned and dreaming about what life can be.”

In 2009, Hannoura became pregnant, and it was around this time that Gabel’s feelings of dysphoria began to reemerge, but weren’t acted on. In a 2014 interview on ‘George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight,’ Laura Jane Grace said “the idea of [Hannoura] having a son freaked me out…I was really struggling with dysphoria then. I hadn’t made the decision to transition at that point.”

To Gabel’s relief, later that year, Hannoura gave birth to a daughter, Evelyn, and the following year, the family moved to St. Augustine, Florida. 2010 also saw the release of White Crosses, the bands most commercially successful record and their second record on Sire with Butch Vig.

White Crosses pushes the melodies to the forefront of the record, features more vocal harmonies and a somewhat more radio-friendly sound. The album also contains many telling lyrics and concepts to Gabel’s state of mind in 2010. The revolution continues its shift from a political one to a social one, and the album’s biggest single, “I Was a Teenage Anarchist,” shows how much Gabel’s political standing has grown and matured since the days of Axl Rose. The song tells the story of how Gabel became disillusioned with the anarchist punk scene (“In the depths of their humanity, all I saw was bloodless ideology. And with freedom as the doctrine, guess who was the new authority?” “They wanted me to surrender my identity. I was a teenage anarchist, the revolution was a lie.”)

Gabel wrote about the death of an old friend from Gainesville in “Because of the Shame.” He told Songfacts.com that at the funeral, her mother asked Gabel to write a song about his friend, and sings about details of their funeral and their time together, referencing her “name tattooed into my skin.”

“Ache With Me,” Against Me!’s first acoustic track since “Joy” on Searching For a Former Clarity, is one of the album’s songs about gender dysphoria, with several lyrics about shame and finding strength in others experiencing the same hardship (“Do you share the same sense of defeat? Have you realized all the things you’ll never be?” “I’ve asked preachers, doctors and lawyers, socialites, pariahs, mothers and fathers. You may not find all that you’re after, in the end I hope it doesn’t matter.”)

In tradition with the last two records, White Crosses ends with another lyrical revelation. In “Bamboo Bones,” Gabel writes, “Does it look ridiculous? Well I guess that’s just what I have to live with,” and the refrain, “What God doesn’t give to you, you’ve got to go and get for yourself,” whether knowingly or not, foreshadows the direction that the next few years of Gabel’s life would take.

Gabel’s dysphoria was becoming overwhelming. By September of 2010, he would take week long trips alone to hotels dressed as a woman, writing a new concept album about a transsexual prostitute under the name ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues.’ In Against Me! cancelled several October and November tour dates, say a “culmination of circumstances were engulfing us,” in their blog, and in November, the band left Sire Records. Months later, Gabel started his own studio, Total Treble, and a corresponding record label, Total Treble Music, where he began producing and releasing future Against Me! material, but only after the most critical year of his adult life.

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