Laura Jane Grace played Four Seasons Total Landscaping

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Standing on a makeshift stage surrounded by bushes, smelling of cedar chips resting in the humid summer air, Laura Jane Grace addressed the purchased soldiers who glared at Philadelphia’s outdoor industrial wasteland to see her play. of a relatively unconventional area: Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

“I performed in big arenas, at Wembley Stadium,” he said Saturday afternoon, holding only an acoustic guitar to complement for his band. “I sang on stage with Cyndi Lauper, wrote songs with Weezer, was on stage with Joan Jett, none of those compare to it.” The crowd laughed and roared, a gathering of punks of all ages in black, band shirt, Van, and neon hair – smiling. “I’m 40 years old, and I get a bigger majority than Rudy [Giuliani], and I have more followers on Twitter than Donald Fucking Trump, which isn’t necessarily bad for a transgender high school dropout. “

His fingers dug into his guitar as he began his set with “True Trans Soul Rebel,” on Against Me’s 2014 Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Most sang along with the chorus like part of the band – “Does God bless your transsexual heart? / Truly a rebellious soul” – as they wait for the moment. And, in many ways, they have.

Last November, the scene here at Four Seasons Total Landscaping was definitely whitewashed. There’s President Donald Trump’s lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, bubbling about voter fraud in front of the garage door of a modest landscaping business as part of a press conference that resulted in a series of increasingly annoying meme.

We all suspect that Trump and his cronies inadvertently booked the venue, rather than intend to hold their presser at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philly; Trump, as before, will play the naked emperor who insists on the greater quality of his clothes. The whole thing was pretty funny for a while – especially as the venue was located between a crematorium and an adult bookstore, a surprising circle of life – but as Trump and Co. continued. on the railing against the electoral college, everyone has been, for the absence of a better phrase, a massive bummer. The world is on fire and no matter how much intelligence we throw at the pyre, there is no respite from the stink.

This latest stunt can hit a clunky chord, like the now-too-trodden phrase “Cheeto Mussolini” or a kicked-to-death parody about small hands. There’s a cut-out of Rudy that you can rag and, of course, officially merch. Inside, there’s even a framed printout of Trump’s now famous tweet: “Big press conference today in Philadelphia at Four Seasons Total Landscaping!” Instead, the whole affair is cleaning; an elimination of bad energy – along with bad vibe, along with good.

This was Grace’s second live show since the pandemic and, despite playing on a stage located near the wall of wheelbarrows, she performed as if in a stadium. He gave the diehard fans to the crowd – which, let’s face it, was everything – what they wanted: Against Me! classics such as “Pints ​​of Guinness Make You Strong,” “Reinventing Axl Rose,” and “Sink, Florida, Sink,” as well as tracks from her various side projects, such as Laura Jane Grace and “Reality Bites” by Devouring Mothers.

He also played a liberal number of tracks from his latest solo album, Stay Alive, which he recorded during the early days of the pandemic between taking a marathon bath and splitting Zoom calls. The “Hanging Tree,” in particular, hit the house because of the setting. Grace wrote that song in 2017 about Trump and where he got his strength. “The ultimate conclusion is he doesn’t have any kind of soul, and if you don’t have any kind of soul, then you don’t have any soul to lose. That’s where I think his power comes from. He’s the fucking antichrist,” she told Rolling Stone before the record’s October 2020 release.And that’s an attitude that the crowd can certainly put in the background as they roar with Grace, “God is good and God is great / Now dismiss the USA!”

And then there are moments of heartbreaking happiness, best wrapped up in a new song Grace introduced called “All Fucked Out.” He wrote the track a few weeks ago, he said, after deciding to write a sound similar to what was the number one hit in the country back then: As the pop band sang they were “smooth as butter,” Grace’s song is a sing-songy comedy in the country in which she declares: left / all I am involved. ”

There’s a lot of anger about the state of the world, for sure – Grace dedicated “Osama bin Laden as the Crucified Christ” to the “death of the fascists” – and the fear of Covid -19 is still there, physically, on the masked members of audiences wore an emblazon with Grace’s latest album title that doubled as a warning: “Stay Alive.” But seeing Grace above the stage lifted the darkness for hours – even as the storm clouds of Hurricane Henri passed over the horizon. When he lands on “Black Me Out,” the cartoon character Guiliani enters the crowd, diving into a sea, a final gasp of an old joke sacrificed to the ecstasy of live music.

List

“True Trans Soul Rebel” “The Swimming Pool Song” “Mysterious Anachro Punks” “Guinness Pints ​​Will Strengthen You” “Reinventing Axl Rose” “All Fucked Out” “Hanging Tree” “Old Friend” “Too Long, Goodbye, Auf Wiedersehen, Fuck Off” “Reities Bites” “Osama bin Laden as the Crucified Christ” “Baby, I’m an Anarchist” “Sink, Florida, Sink” “Black Me Out”

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