Against Me! – Memphis Flyer

Bianca Phillips

Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! performing at Bonnaroo.

We weren’t going to let the biggest music festival in Tennessee slip between our fingers! Long time ‘Roo fan Bianca Phillips gives us the details. -Chris Shaw.

Bonnaroo Recap, Thursday and Friday:

The 13th annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival is underway in Manchester, Tennessee, and about 80,000 people from all over the world have descended on the rural town to see a bevy of musical acts spanning multiple genres — rock, rap, folk, punk, EDM, etc.

We got a bit of a late start leaving Memphis on Thursday morning, so we didn’t arrive to Manchester until about 3:30 p.m. After setting up camp, we’d already missed several acts, including the teen thrash metal act, Unlocking the Truth. We’d never heard them, but the premise was intriguing. By the time we ventured into Centeroo, the festival’s main grounds with five large stages and a number of smaller performance tents, we were just in time for indie rockers Glass Animals. But the sound was off, and from our spot just outside their stage at The Other Tent (Stages at Bonnaroo are named This, That, Other, Which, and What), all we could hear was the bass. We wandered around Centeroo, but failed to find anything else that held our attention.

Bonnaroo has taken some flack this year for its weak line-up, and Thursday’s lack of big-name acts made for, perhaps, the worst opening day since the Flyer began covering Bonnaroo six years ago. At least, that’s my opinion anyway. Friday had more on offer though, including a guest appearance by 1980s teen actor Corey Feldman. This is the 30th anniversary of The Goonies, and they were screening the film in the air-conditioned Cinema Tent, where cult classics and newer films are shown all weekend.

Feldman was there for an audience Q&A, and while we missed that, we did arrive just in time for a performance by Feldman’s weird ‘90s band, Corey Feldman and the Angels. The lyrics sounded like they’d been written by a 15-year-old, and Feldman admitted that, in fact, some of the songs were written when he was a kid. He was backed by some scantily clad ladies in angel wings. Next up was anarcho-punk band Against Me! I was most excited to see them perform because lead singer Laura Jane Grace recently transitioned, and she’s become quite the role model for trans teens. The last time I saw them at the Hi-Tone, the band’s lead singer had not yet made her transition and was performing as a man. But at Bonnaroo, Grace seemed to have come into her own. She commanded the stage and brought an amazing amount of energy to my personal favorite Against Me! Song, “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” (It’s my favorite because I, too, was a teenage anarchist).

Bianca Phillips

Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes at Bonnaroo 2015.

The Alabama Shakes rocked it out on Roo’s largest main stage, the What Stage. The roots band’s lead singer Brittany Howard led the band through a powerful set that made me realize that I should really give the band another listen. I’d dismissed them as “just another band that hipsters like.” But I think they may actually be pretty good. Compton-based hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar tore it up late into the night. As he made his entrance, the bass from his speakers literally made my ears vibrate, and I could feel my nose hairs move. Seriously. I’ve never considered wearing ear plugs at these events until Lamar’s energetic set.

The night closed out with glowsticks and LED hula-hoops shimmering all over Centeroo’s grounds as headliner Deadmau5 played his chilled-out style of progressive house music. We expected the set to have a little more energy, but that’s only because, in the past few years, Bonnaroo has boasted a heavy dubstep line-up. Deadmau5’s music is more trance-y and laid back. But that didn’t keep the people from dancing. And once Deadmau5’s hour-and-a-half set was over, the raving festival-goers just kept dancing since the EDM lasted until about 4 a.m. last night with sets from Odesza and STS9. I caught a few minutes of each of those performances and called it a night though since we have to do it all again today. I’ll write about what Saturday had to offer in the next recap.

“We are the Pipettes,” sing the Pipettes by way of introduction. “If you haven’t noticed yet, we’re the prettiest girls you’ve ever met.” A prefab girl group not unlike the Shangri-La’s or the Spice Girls, the Pipettes rock matching polka-dot dresses, horn-rimmed glasses, lacquered make-up, and cute nicknames (Gwenno, Rosay, and RiotBecki) as a means of repackaging prepunk sounds for post-punk audiences. More blatantly retro than Lily Allen or Amy Winehouse, but also just as modern, they’re as much a project as a band, one that emphasizes their physical as well as musical attributes.

In one sense, this girl group might seem as suspicious as a boy band, but the Pipettes have a lot of fun with their constructed image. Their debut cleverly updates girl-group sounds to address modern concerns from a distinct — and playful — female perspective. In other words, what Ronnie Spector could only hint at, the Pipettes can sing about openly. On “Sex,” which kicks off with a “Be My Baby” drum intro, they shut up a talkative date with a trip to the bedroom; “Dirty Mind,” about an imaginative lover with OCD, could be a response to the Prince song of the same name. And of course there are (slightly more) innocent songs about boys (“I Love You”), romantic confusion (“Why Did You Stay?”), and dancing (“It Hurts to See You Dance So Well,” which could get by on title alone).

Ultimately, it’s the Pipettes’ musical attributes that truly sell these dramas. Each has a strong and expressive voice individually, but together, they sound even better, mixing their vocals up in harmonies that are compelling and surprisingly complex. It helps that the Pipettes have a resourceful backing band, the Cassette, who effortlessly re-create the swing and shake of the ’60s while pulling a few tricks from ’80s English synthpop — all without intruding on the Pipettes’ vocals. Everything comes together on the album’s two best tracks, “Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me” and “Pull Shapes.” The former features their most ecstatic vocals and catchiest kiss-offs, and in a just world, the latter would inspire a global dance craze. — Stephen Deusner.

(Sire)

Grade: A-

On their recent single “White People for Peace” (its self-deprecating title crucially revealing), four-piece Florida punk band Against Me! rails against a bad war with a “protest song in response to military aggression.”

(Cherrytree/Interscope)

But, like so many great punk bands before them, they’re most articulate when keeping politics local — trying to change the larger culture by changing their own scene first.

The title/lead track on this endlessly rocking major-label debut — produced by Butch Vig, who sweetens and strengthens Against Me!’s sound as he once did with Nirvana — refers not to a genre of music but to a metaphor for greater change that starts with bandleader Tom Gabel himself and extends to his fans, friends, and scene cohorts. Gabel actually opens the album by singing these lyrics: “We can control the medium/We can control the context of presentation/Well, is there anybody on the receiving end?/Reaching out for some kind of connection?”

Those lyrics don’t exactly scan, but they do sing when backed up by a rush of anthemic guitar rock and gang vocals, and when they’re underscored (but not undercut) by Gabel’s self-conscious wit, by a personal touch, as on “Thrash Unreal,” the raggedy, empathetic portrait of a young woman who might be an Against Me! fan, and by a willingness to implicate themselves in their own cultural critiques, as on “Americans Abroad,” where the band relives a European tour by wondering how different they are from the “arrogant, ignorant American” stereotype.

“We can be the bands we want to hear/We can define our own generation,” Gabel sings — no, promises — on “New Wave.” This is not the kind of thing you hear from young, white guitar bands anymore. The spirit of hopeful punk defiance evokes Hüsker Dü, while the band’s combination of direct, somewhat academic-sounding political language with an otherwise working-class perspective recalls the Minutemen. Those ’80s indie bands were both smarter and less collegiate than the generations that followed them. In this regard, Against Me! is a throwback, and, with indie/alt rock in a particularly mumbly, navel-gazing state, a welcome one. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-