Against Me!'s Reinventing Axl Rose sounded a bit like the Clash or Billy Bragg on the first take-- hardly polished, ragged, and throaty. AM! filtered folk, country, and reggae through the veneer of anthemic punk rock; with no rhythm section to speak of, their songs shot forward on the rough engine of Tom Gabel's voice and the headlong disorder of the band's ragtag instrumentation. They sounded, basically, like glorified spoken word pieces, set to a tune. The band's refusal to do anything resembling a second take hit a kind of DIY nerve so precisely that within a few months of the record's emergence, it was on its way to becoming No Idea's all-time best-selling release.
This was in 2002. Within a year there were hundreds of bands that sounded like them (check the excellent Plan-It-X label) and skeptics gritted their teeth, recognized a trend when they saw one, and waited for things to pass. Among these skeptics, it turned out, was the band itself. Against Me! saw the end long before most of their fans did-- it didn't help that their most popular song, "Baby, I'm an Anarchist!", was exactly the novelty it appears to be-- and this fact might explain how they ended up, five years later, on a major label, with Butch Vig at the controls, and seeking their third or fourth or tenth new audience in as many years.
For a bunch of self-professed anarchists and DIY devotees, the jump to pop-punk haven and Warped Tour affiliate Fat Wreck Chords only a year after they'd talked thousands of kids into believing what they ostensibly did was about as a jarring and contradictory as it sounds. Two records later, they finished the job of demolishing their own fans' newly learned anti-capitalist ethic by signing to Sire, after making an MTV video and a documentary about how extremely they were courted by besuited guys with way more money to burn than Fat Mike. In a post indie-rock world where the Decemberists and Death Cab for Cutie and even Mastodon were cheered for making the major label leap, Against Me! became the first band of the 21st Century to actually succeed at selling out.
"We can control the medium" are the first words you hear listening to New Wave: "We can control the context of presentation." Fan expectations aside, Against Me! built their sound in reaction to big-chorus guitar-rock, and this track, "New Wave", is almost exactly that: big jangly chorus, vague topicality ("Come on and wash these shores away!"), vocal overdubs by the scores. "No signs of original thought in the mainstream," sings Gabel, and the anxiety is palpable. It's also, as far as these things go, an immaculately stirring song, a sing-a-long on the first pass kind of confection.
This is comfortable territory on the Warped Tour axis, Against Me!'s adopted home. "Trash Unreal" is a Rancid-esque ode about a girl who gets mixed up with the wrong drugs and the wrong guys and the wrong crowd, dances to "Rebel Yell," ages out of the scene, and wakes up a thirty-something junkie. "Americans Abroad" is an anti- cultural imperialism anthem. Tegan of Tegan and Sara guests on "Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart", an emo duet. "White People for Peace" concerns the desire of white people for peace; it's also the first single, and with its "protest songs" refrain you'd have to be a pretty lousy guy not to like it. These are longstanding punk tropes boiled down and Vig-ed up, removed of their typical dirt sheen and bolstered by a couple extra guitar tracks.
Of course, the need to say something is a double-edged sword at this level, where Gabel's tasked with ways of making his standard stiff and excessive syllables-- "East and West could not agree, so their Generals gave call and gathered troops at the border"-- sound like something you'd buy a ticket to see. Earnest self-importance of the Bad Religion school rear-ends latter day Green Day we-are-the-worlditude, and the next thing you know you're shouting "civilian casualties had been a cost that was predetermined/when interviewed for report victims pleaded in frustration" and wondering what the hell happened.
For one thing, who even knows to whom this band is speaking anymore? "Up the Cuts", an agonized look at the failing record industry, is a song nobody thought Against Me! would write. "All the insiders rumor over the decline in sales, all the buzz is happening in the new digital marketplace" Gabel sings, or tries to anyway, and one feels for him. "In MRR, someone asks the question...is the culture now a product that's disposable?" Gabel asks, and on the lyric sheet, though not in the song, "MRR" is followed by a parenthesis: (Maximum Rock and Roll). Against Me! have come a long way indeed, when they need to explain to their audience what they mean by that acronym. And where they've arrived at, even they don't know. As Gabel sings, finishing the track: "All the punks still singing the same song, is there anybody thinking what I am? Is there any other alternative? Are you restless like me?"
