Laura Jane Grace's new surprise album 'Stay Alive' is a raw, unedited missive from lockdown.
Alexa Viscius*Standing on a makeshift stage surrounded by shrubbery, the smell of cedar chips lacing the humid summer air, Laura Jane Grace addressed the sold-out crowd that had shambled through the industrial wasteland of the Philadelphia outskirts to see her play a pretty unconventional venue: Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
“I’ve performed at big arenas, at Wembley Stadium,” she said Saturday afternoon, holding just an acoustic guitar that would fill in for her band. “I sang onstage with Cyndi Lauper, written songs with Weezer, been onstage with Joan Jett, none of that compares to this.” The crowd laughed and roared, an assemblage of punks of all ages in black, band shirts, Vans, and neon hair — smiling. “I’m 40 years old, and I can draw a bigger crowd than Rudy [Giuliani], and I have more Twitter followers than Donald Fucking Trump, which isn’t fucking so bad for a transgender high school dropout.”
Her fingers dug into her guitar as she kicked off her set with “True Trans Soul Rebel,” off Against Me’s 2014’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues. The crowd sang along to the chorus like part of the band — “Does God bless your transsexual heart?/True trans soul rebel” — like they’d been waiting for this moment. And, in many ways, they have.
Last November, the scene here at Four Seasons Total Landscaping was decidedly bleaker. There was then-President Donald Trump’s attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, blathering about voter fraud in front of the rolling garage door of a modest landscaping business as part of a press conference that birthed a series of ever-more-annoying memes.
We all suspected that Trump and his cronies had booked the place accidentally, instead intending to hold their presser at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philly; Trump, as usual, played the role of the naked emperor insisting on the superior 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 grotesque circle of life — but as Trump and Co. continued to rail against the electoral college, it all just became, for lack of a better phrase, a massive bummer. The world was burning and no matter how much sage we threw on the pyre, there was no respite from the stink.
This latest stunt could have struck a clunky chord, like the now-too-trodden phrase “Cheeto Mussolini” or a kicked-to-death joke about tiny hands. There was a cut-out of Rudy you could mug with and, of course, official merch. Inside, there was even a framed printout of Trump’s now-infamous tweet: “Big press conference today in Philadelphia at Four Seasons Total Landscaping!” Instead, the whole affair was cleansing; a banishing of bad energy — out with the bad vibes, in with the good.
This was Grace’s second live show since the pandemic and, despite playing on a stage situated near a wall of wheelbarrows, she performed like she was in a stadium. She gave the diehard fans in the crowd — which, let’s face it, was everyone — what they wanted: Against Me! classics like “Pints of Guinness Make You Strong,” “Reinventing Axl Rose,” and “Sink, Florida, Sink,” as well as tracks from her various side projects, like Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers’ “Reality Bites.”
She also played a liberal number of tracks from her latest solo album, Stay Alive, which she recorded during the early days of the pandemic in between taking marathon baths and hating Zoom calls. “Hanging Tree,” especially, hit home given the setting. Grace wrote that song in 2017 about Trump and where he derives his power. “The ultimate conclusion is that 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 a sentiment the crowd could certainly get behind as they roared along with Grace, “God is good and God is great/Now get the fuck out of the USA!”
And then there were the moments of giddy levity, best encapsulated in a new song Grace introduced called “All Fucked Out.” She wrote the track a few weeks ago, she said, after deciding to write a tune similar to whatever the number-one hit in the country was at the time: BTS’ “Butter,” as it turned out. While the pop band sings that they’re “smooth like butter,” Grace’s song is a sing-songy bit of quasi-country humor in which she proclaims: “I’m dry like bread/stale and crusty/I got just the ends left/I’m all fucked out.”
There was plenty of angst about the state of the world, sure — Grace dedicated “Osama bin Laden as the Crucified Christ” to the “death of fascists” — and fear of Covid-19 was still there, physically, in the masks audience members wore emblazoned with Grace’s newest album title doing double duty as a warning: “Stay Alive.” But seeing Grace onstage lifted the gloom for a few hours — even as the storm clouds of Hurricane Henri hovered on the horizon. When she ripped into “Black Me Out,” the cardboard Guiliani made its way into the crowd, surfing across a sea of hands, a final gasp of an old joke sacrificed to the euphoria of live music.
Setlist
“True Trans Soul Rebel”
“The Swimming Pool Song”
“Those Anachro Punks Are Mysterious”
“Pints of Guinness Make You Strong”
“Reinventing Axl Rose”
“All Fucked Out”
“Hanging Tree”
“Old Friend”
“So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Fuck Off”
“Reality Bites”
“Osama bin Laden as the Crucified Christ”
“Baby, I’m an Anarchist”
“Sink, Florida, Sink”
“Black Me Out”
LIVE REVIEWS
Japanese singer-songwriter Fujii Kaze released a concert Blu-ray & CD called Fujii Kaze Stadium Live “Feelin’ Good” featuring his biggest solo headlining shows so far by the same name that took place at Nissan Stadium in Kanagawa, Japan on Aug. 24 and 25.
About 140,000 fans flocked to see the shows over the two days that vividly conveyed Fujii’s magnetism as an artist — exceptional musicianship, outstanding entertainer’s spirit, a laid-back, natural presence that makes you forget you’re seeing him in a stadium setting, and a loving mind that looks out for each person in the audience. This writer also attended one of the shows and the two-hour set was an experience that left a lingering sense of euphoria.
The package delves deeply into the concert experience from various angles. Those who went to the shows will be able to relive the excitement, and for those not familiar with Fujii Kaze will be able to understand why he is loved by so many.
The Blu-ray is a two-disc set, with Disc 1 containing live footage compiled mainly from the show on Aug. 25. Kento Yamada, a filmmaker who also directed the show itself, helmed the visuals for the concert film as well. Disc 2 contains the approx. 70-minute Feelin’ Good (Documentary) film, which shows fans the behind-the-scenes of the shows. This doc directed by filmmaker Elizabeth Miyaji contains a new interview of the 27-year-old musician, who speaks candidly about the concept of the shows and his thoughts on the project. The CD contains 16 tracks personally selected by the singer himself. The following are some highlights from the visual and audio discs.
The concerts were full of various gimmicks and stage effects, and by capturing them on video, they become easier to understand and enjoy. The show kicks off with Fujii suddenly appearing in the stands. As cheers break out, he slowly walks down the stairs near the audience and heads for the grand piano placed on the grass in the center of the arena. The camera also highlights the genuine expressions of surprise and joy on the audience members’ faces.
The impressive stage set was like a theme park with a stairway, bridge, and garage covered with vegetation. Based on Fujii’s desire to create something that evokes a sense of nature, Yamada meticulously crafted the set down to the smallest details, including the texture of the soil and the small objects inside the garage. The huge LED screen behind the stage displayed images like city and sky, designed to help create the impression of a single world when fused with the layout onstage.
The dancers’ performances were also notable. In particular, the multi-talented artist and his dancers performed choreography that was perfectly in sync for “Kirari” and “Kiri Ga Naikara” in the middle of the show. While Fujii is well-known for singing along to his own virtuoso accompaniment on the piano, his dance performances also showcase his star power.
The “Nan-Nan” hitmaker says in the documentary that the keyword for this show is “youth” (seishun). Sharing the fresh energy of youth with the 70,000 people in the stadium, with live renditions of “Seishun Sick,” sung while swaying with his dancers arm-around-shoulder, and an 8-beat punk rock version of “Tabiji,” was also one of the highlights of the concert.
While the respective visual projects on the Blu-ray discs are quite close to perfection, the recording on the CD allows fans to enjoy the you-are-there vibe of the show. The band members consist of Yaffle on keyboards, who also serves as band master, TAIKING from Suchmos on guitar, Naoki Kobayashi on bass, Norihide Saji on drums, Takashi Fukuoka on percussion, and ARIWA from ASOUND and Emoh Les on backing vocals. The funky, danceable beat of “MO-EH-YO (Ignite)” and the rich harmonies of “Shinunoga E-Wa” are just some of the highlights of the live arrangements.
Looking back over this past year, Fujii took on many challenges and overcame them all. From May to June, he traveled to North America for his first solo headlining trek in the region called Fujii Kaze and the Piano U.S. Tour, selling out both shows in Los Angeles and New York. From October to December, he visited 10 cities in Asia and performed in arenas for his Best of Fujii Kaze 2020-2024 ASIA TOUR, which also ended on a high note.
Fujii released only two new songs in 2024 — “Michi Teyu Ku (Overflowing),” the theme song for Tomokazu Yamada’s first feature film April Come She Will that became his fifth track to rack up 100 million streams in Japan, and the A. G. Cook-produced “Feelin’ Go(o)d,” released in July — but appears to be actively working on other tracks. The stadium concerts and arena tour were like a culmination of Fujii’s career to date, and fans are looking forward to experiencing his new mode of expression in the coming year.
This article by Tomonori Shiba first appeared on Billboard Japan. Fujii Kaze is stylized in Japanese order, surname first.
