156. Against Me!
Electric Ballroom
8 December 2016
Some nights come at you sideways. They start with innocent intentions, a couple of drinks, a bit of live music, a chance to spend some time with your mates, and then, before you know it, someone’s being propositioned in the toilets by a large man in a leather harness. Welcome to Against Me! at the Electric Ballroom, Camden.
This was an anarchic punk band, so I was there with three friends with one mission: shouty, sweaty catharsis via Florida’s finest purveyors of insurgent, razor-sharp punk.
The Ballroom was packed, a sea of Doc Martens and tattooed limbs, given the fact that this band is led by a transgender frontwoman whose songs are on the forefront of LGBTQ activism, no small number of the rock-gay community, all buzzing with pre-gig energy with the mosh pit already opening for early entrants.
The band hit the stage like they’ve just kicked the doors in. Laura Jane Grace, fire-eyed and snarl-voiced launches straight into “True Trans Soul Rebel” and it’s like the room catches fire. No preamble. No easing in. Just full-throttle punk truth from the off. “Unconditional Love,” “White Crosses,” “I Was A Teenage Anarchist”, the hits keep coming, furious and flawless. Sweat pours from the walls, people climb over each other to get closer to the chaos. And my pal, well he went to the loos and had quite the adventure.
Now, Camden is many things. Predictable is not one of them. On his way to the gents, he is propositioned by what he describes, through slightly shell-shocked laughter, as “a 6ft bear in a mesh vest” who told him, quite sincerely, he’d “use him like a ragdoll”. Now I’ve known him a long time. I’ve seen him navigate around several interesting and unexpected encounters, but nothing, nothing, prepared him for that sentence. “I just nodded,” he said, returning to our spot during “Black Me Out”.
The band thrashed their way through a set that felt like both a protest and a celebration. Laura’s voice cracked with fury and joy in equal measure. There was no posturing, just guts and guitars that sounded like they were trying to bring down institutions brick by brick.
By the end, we spilled onto Camden High Street like a victorious mob of sweaty revolutionaries. We’d been screamed at, danced into submission, and vaguely terrified in the toilets. That’s an interesting night, by any metric.