Searching for a Former Clarity,
Against Me!With all the hubbub surrounding Against Me!’s recent signing to Sire Records, a subsidiary of Warner Bros, it’s probably the perfect time to review their latest full release. Not that I’m attempting to cover up for the fact I managed to lose this in my ‘to review’ pile. Oh no, not at all.
Anyway, despite this record seeing its official release in September 2005 – a good 3 months before we learned of said signing – you can see the leanings toward an ever so slightly different audience. The opening tracks are catchy, no question, but they’re catchy in a style that is entirely non-reminiscent of Pints of Guinness, et al. ‘Unprotected sex with multiple partners’ is where I think Against Me! are going to head now that they’ve signed to Sire. It’s the Against Me! that you know and love, but the bass lines sound like something from a Franz Ferdinand record! It comes across bearing a much stronger dance/indie vibe whilst retaining the trademark vocals.
14 tracks. It’s good value, if I’m honest, but along with great songs like ‘Unprotected…’ and the Condoleezza Rice ‘tribute’ song ‘From Her Lips to God’s Ears (The Energizer)’, it includes the turgid shit that is ‘Holy Shit’ and that awfully produced ‘Joy’ – a song which sounded brilliant to me on the demos which were leaked early last year and has now been butchered into substantially less than a shadow of its former self and I was massively disappointed upon first listening to it. ‘Even at our worst we’re still better than most (the roller)’ is pretty naff, too.
The record picks up after that trio of, for want of a better word, ‘mistakes’, but the record itself can be summed up by the self-titled song at the end of CD. Against Me! seem to be very much Searching For That Former Clarity, and I’m not nearly naïve enough to think that they didn’t envisage this happening, and have that there as a tongue-in-cheek “Fuck you all!” to those who disparage their anarchistic ethos, but they know that the future from here on in looks a whole lot different to where they’ve come from. This record isn’t bad, but it’s not great either and is obviously no Revinventing. I challenge you to not find a few songs you like on here, but I’d be very surprised if you like it all and as such I long for their next record with a hope for a Rise Against-style silencer to all the naysayers, yet I can’t say that I do not await for it with certain degree of trepidation.
Spud
www.againstme.net/
Fat Wreck
