FR Reviews, rather than being a video of the reviewer’s face, was a slideshow with a voiceover. This one felt a bit more personal than the other reviews, as with less than 100 views it was clear he wasn’t trying to share news with a large audience. It felt a lot more personal, an aspect only helped by the dog pictures popping up when he was describing his excitement over the album before Shape Shift with Me, Transgender Dysphoria Blues. That was clearly his favorite album of the two, stating that it had helped the band “come to life.” This review went against the opinions of others, not only because he preferred the earlier album, but because he felt Norse Truth was a strong track specifically because of the wordiness that turned other people off. He also points out that it has the same hints of folk and country that the band has always had (along with a message popping up about how people shouldn’t freak out that he had brought up “the C word”). I feel that the smaller audience helped him to be more honest in his review and express relatively “unpopular” opinions on the album. This review particularly helped drive home the point that there isn’t a wrong answer when analyzing media as long as you can support it. The cat pictures didn’t hurt, either.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22419-shape-shift-with-me/

This review describes the album as made up of more breakup songs than love songs, contrary to what it seems on the surface. Unlike any of the other reviews, this one describes how even the cover art contributes to the album’s feelings of loneliness and “loving in absence.” On the cover is a crouching figure licking a boot with a bullwhip on their head. However, when you open the album, the inside cover has only the crouching figure. Since I usually stream music or buy digitally, I don’t usually see details such as that. In addition, this review pointed out the inverse lyrics between the song Delicate, Petite, and Other Things I’ll Never Be, and the song Norse Truth. This is something that I doubt I could have noticed on my own, usually just listening to music as background noise for homework or driving. However, these lyrics offer a cohesiveness to the whole album, despite being described as less straightforward of an album than Transgender Dysphoria Blues. As is typical for any band, this album gets compared a lot to older material, but rather than a sort of “look how much worse they are now,” this review presents it as a sort of return to what made the band unique in the first place.

This reviewer thought that the shift from typical punk topics to romantic relationships and their dynamics was a good transition to make. After the band signed on to a bigger label, he thought that Laura Jane Grace’s transition could help bring back a sort of “ragged edge” to the band’s music. He liked this album more than Transgender Dysphoria Blues, which seems to be the general consensus. Unlike Doyle, he doesn’t feel that Crash was a particularly strong song, and that the midsection of the album was “phenomenal.” A lot of the criticisms of this album revolve around how it sounds more pop-punk, but Mark Grondin counters this with a simple, “Who cares? It’s great pop punk,” speaking specifically about the song Rebecca. However, like most reviewers, Norse Truth didn’t really stand out to him. Additionally, he says that the backup vocals for songs such as “Suicide Bomber” weren’t particularly good, but Grace’s passion and emotion make up for it.

He describes the songs as love songs that are informed and influenced by the trans experience, but not solely about them. I had never really separated these two, and having the difference clearly described helped me to understand that difference. It helped me look more closely at how the perspective informs the lyrics.

 Doyle describes the album Shape Shift with Me as “solid,” but not entirely without problems. He begins with the positive, bringing up his top three songs: 12:03, a “great, great punk song”; Crash, whose bass and melody were perfect; and 333, a “massive” song with an excellent guitar. Unlike many reviews of the band’s previous album, Doyle says that the “production suits the tone.” Going into some of the weak points of the album, he compares Grace’s vocals to The Offspring, which a couple of commenters disagreed with. I also do not see the similarity, but I don’t really listen to much of The Offspring outside of what’s on the radio. Additionally, the lyrics often don’t seem to suit the tone, which is a problem brought up in reviews of their previous album as well. Doyle also pointed out how songs like “Delicate, Petite, and Other things I’ll Never Be,” a song about a trans woman’s dysphoria, wasn’t the most relatable to him. I understand how relatable music really appeals to people, and how it’s great when a song about a seemingly narrow topic is applicable to a wider audience, it kind of seems like the point of songs like these was to display an experience others may not have had. The experimentation in some of the songs on the second half of the album didn’t really work in Doyle’s opinion, especially in the track Norse Truth. Although it wasn’t my favorite song either, I do like it. However, looking more closely at it, I do see problems in the song. It does feel pretty clunky at times, especially with Grace’s habit of cramming as many syllables into a line as possible. Usually I really like this aspect, but in Norse Truth it gets a little convoluted. This helped me understand how to look at factors of songs such as its cadence, and although this was less of an analysis, it still helps me look at music a bit more critically.

• https://dyingscene.com/news/album-review-against-me-transgender-dysphoria-blues/

This review sits pretty evenly between the opinions of the last two. According to Dying Scene, this album’s execution was a little bland and undermines the lyrical quality of the album. Similar to TheNeedleDrop, this review compares the punk-pop qualities of the song to Green Day. However, the quality of this album more than made up for their previous lackluster album, White Crosses. While I had never before made the comparison between some of the more pop-y songs on the album to Green Day, I did notice how a few songs sounded like pop-punk, but I still enjoyed them.

This review, like the one from Pop Matters, applauds the use of “grotesque” bodily imagery in the album. Unlike both other reviewers, however, this one didn’t particularly like the line “Does God bless your transsexual heart?” in the song, True Trans Soul Rebel. According to this review, it kind of takes away from the song. I had never really seen it that way, and I still have a little trouble, but I can see how that lyric doesn’t quite fit many of the other lines of the song.

The track Osama Bin Laden as the Crucified Christ is delved into for this review, and its use of imagery of terrorism and crucifixion are described as being an abstract way of discussing Grace’s experience with dysphoria. I will be completely honest, I just thought this song was a wild ride. I had never noticed any connections to personal feelings, but now it makes a ton of sense.  

https://www.popmatters.com/178403-against-me-transgender-dysphoria-blues-2495693578.html

 This review does nothing to hide its love for the album. It discusses the use of bodily imagery, such as fingers or hearts or shoulders, to display tension in songs like “Paralytic States.” Almost constantly, the body talk is in the third person, creating emotional distance between Grace and the songs that are reflective of her personal experiences. It talks about how this tactic makes emotional moments more effective and “emphasizes the distance between body and identity,” and not only in terms of gender identity. I had never quite noticed all of that imagery as something that could be analyzed like that. I had been looking at each song individually rather than the record as a whole. The song “Black Me Out” was, according to this review, less about shapeless rage or a kiss goodbye to the band’s record label, and more about “denying a much larger set of false controls” and parts of a life that had “lived under a series of thumbs.”  The third to last line of the song, and of the entire album, is “full body high.” The review points out how this is one of the few instances of a positive connections with the body. That line had always seemed like the most hopeful part of any song in any album. Grace’s voice has “visceral” emotion in it, a word that gets used a lot in these reviews and that I could not agree with more, contrary to the review from TheNeedleDrop, calling it lacking in the very thing Pop Matters praises it most for.

TheNeedleDrop’s review of 2014 album Transgender Dysphoria Blues reflects on his love for the band during his college years, detailing how he enjoyed the mixture of folk and punk, as well as how their albums from 2001-02 felt “captivating” with their punk rebellion and enjoyed how the music really felt like it stood for something. He discusses how their music wasn’t only about the politics of the world, but had a deep, personal touch. However, after signing onto a bigger record label, he felt as if they lost their raw intensity and became more tame.

He continues with the band’s story, talking about how when frontwoman Laura Jane Grace officially came out as transgender and announced an album called “Transgender Dysphoria Blues,” fans were expecting a sort of tell-all about her experiences. However, this wasn’t the focus of every song, although it clearly doesn’t try to cover up trans issues. He said the album was less for changing minds and more just expressing her experiences as a trans woman and affirming the values of people who already support the LGBTQ+ community. This isn’t a negative in his opinion, everyone likes listening to music that they agree with ideologically. The album wasn’t as “stimulating” as some of their earlier music, and he felt as if the wordy lyrics couldn’t quite hold some songs’ rhythms. He couldn’t stand the song, “Unconditional Love” because of how sugary it was, comparing it to Green Day’s typical sound. Similarly, he didn’t like the song “Two Coffins,” although his reasoning was different. The song felt emotionless, the instrumentals too rigid. Often, his criticism was that the songs’ instrumentals didn’t match the emotional lyrics. To him, the lyrics were incredibly powerful, but the instrumentals weren’t as “visceral” as the band’s previous records.  

I haven’t listened to much of the band’s previous content, only having just become a fan of theirs, so I didn’t have the best frame of reference for those particular points. Despite my love for the album, I do agree with most of his points about the lack of emotions in some of the songs’ instrumentals. I had never quite noticed it until he had pointed it out, I just had songs I didn’t like. This helped me figure out why I don’t particularly like those songs.