Album Of The Week: Against Me! Transgender Dysphoria Blues

I've been working for Stereogum for something like two and a half years now, writing literally thousands of blog posts, and I'll stand by nearly every one of them. But there's one towering exception. When Against Me!'s Laura Jane Grace came out as transgender, I was so totally shocked and taken aback -- the leader of one of my favorite bands is not who I thought she was! -- that I wrote something that both reflected that shock and took it into, for some godforsaken reason, outright snark. (The post is still here, if you're morbidly curious.) I don't know what the fuck I was thinking beyond the obvious surprise. But what I should've known -- what I probably would've known if I'd taken a few seconds to think about it rather than rushing to get the post up -- was that my shock had no place in that piece, and my snark damn sure didn't. My surprise was my own problem, not Grace's. It's a huge and massively courageous step to come out as transgender, and people who take it deserve unwavering love and support, not publicly expressed befuddlement in some dude's blog post. My reaction, of course, wasn't the worst one on the internet; plenty of anonymous troll types took their reactions into outright hate-crime territory. Still, I expect better of myself. And now that the new Against Me! album Transgender Dysphoria Blues is out there in the world, I expect that far fewer people will make blundering asshole mistakes like mine. Because Transgender Dysphoria Blues is an album so bracingly powerful and sharp and cathartic and full of life that it should, and will, recalibrate some people's view of the universe. It's a great rock album by any metric, but the greatest thing about it might be that it has everything at stake.