Look, I’m not gonna sit here defending transgendered people. Much like buying a gun licence in Savannah, Georgia, where would be the trick? What I will say is this: always in life a little effort and I can’t see Laura’s. To say Laura Jane Grace is an unconvincing looking woman is to understate state the case. With arms like battering rams, smudgy eyeliner and lipstick, thin stringy hair, a tank top, leather pants and stomping boots, if it wasn’t for a bra peeking thru her top you might be wondering what the fuss about? It is one thing to want to be a woman, it is another to not really look in the slightest like a woman.
Last year the former Tom Gabel, lead singer and songwriter with Florida punk rock band Against Me! came out to Rolling Stone as transgendered. A woman trapped in a man’s body. The renamed Laura Jane Grace fronted her band Against Me! later that year, opening for The Cult at Terminal and I thought the band was aces. But hormone shots and fat redistribution will only get you so far when you are built like a WWE reject.Earler this year the rhthm secrion quit and Laura released a solo two song EP and played a short tour with another transgendered rocker opening, Mina Caputo.
Mina, the former Keith Caputo of Life Of Agony, with a pony tail and hot pants was a somewhat more convincing woman, less so as a musician and her set was pretty damn brutal. All in the same key, it was one long whine interspersed with Mina’s not bad at all stage patter. “I am standing here pouring out my heart”, she says to some ill mannered audience member, “Will you shut the fuck up.” Fair enough and Mina is a brave woman, it takes a certain self-knowledge to live a different life than the one you had been living, but her songwriting leaves a lot to be desired. Like songs and writing: taken at a steady, slow pace, with just her guitar, the songs aren’t remotely there.
Much much better is the opener, llison Weiss, whose half hour set was pretty terrific. “A Woman With Love” (what she is looking for apparently) is a high energy romp and Allison is energetic, smart, loud and exciting. “You have feelings, right?” Allison inquires. “So we’re gonna share out feelings” and she proceeds to play her new album, Say What You Mean. Yeah, it gets a little touchy feely “I’m scared to death, like a hole in the head” she complains. Eek, right. But the songs are good enough to carry her through.
The audience is split between reps from the LGBT community and Against Me! fans and me, and I am not really either. Against Me! aren’t a bad punk rock, liberal up against the wall agit-proppers band, and a new subject matter isn’t such a bad thing. But songs need stickiness and while the 500 plus fans singing along might disagree, Laura’s songs are not stickiness. Her stick is hard rocker drones with run on and on sentences, scatter shot words pouncing out at you and at Bowery Ballroom the audience, or at least a large segment, seemed to know every word.
It was a good set. A new song and an obscurity was followed by four more new songs before Laura dug deeper into her back catalog and it was all good stuff. Powerfully sung, consistently good if not very good, full throated singing and full throated singalongs, and a sort of good natured atmosphere. Laura isn’t that talkative but she isn’t indifferent either and a quip that the just completed new album is about death and addiction is funny enough. Less amusing (but then again it’s not a joke) is writing a new song for your daughter called “Two Coffins”: “One day soon there will be nothing left of you and me”. Yeah, that doesn’t work.
Still, the set is consistent and never far from a “Tonight We’re Gonna Give It 35%” or a “Sink, Florida, Sink”. As we leave, a hook that seems to have done a run off an Everly Brothers oldie rings its way through “Baby, I’m An Anarchist”. Laura stands away from the mic and not for the first time Saturday night we join her in song: “You’ve got all the wrong reasons to fuck it up. You’re gonna fuck it up” we scream. Now that is sticky.
Allison Weiss – B+
Mina Caputo – C
Laura Jane Grace – B
Comments are closed.