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Jan 16, 2014Free of misguided anger but with healthy amounts of trademark anxiety and angular riffs, Grace’s expression is powerful.
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Jan 16, 2014Transgender Dysphoria Blues might be the most important album of the year, and its message will hopefully seep into music culture and spread till records like this don’t *have* to get made anymore.
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Jan 21, 2014Transgender Dysphoria Blues is a perfect storm of great songwriting paired with some timely, frank admissions from Grace.
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Jan 24, 2014Transgender Dysphoria Blues has an universal appeal that will resonate with anyone.
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Jan 21, 2014It is to their considerable credit that Transgender Dysphoria Blues never sounds like the work of a band falling apart; if anything, they're reinvigorated, playing with a purpose lacking on 2010's softly unfocused White Crosses.
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Feb 10, 2014The music--a volatile mix of crashing guitars, drums and pile-driving bass funneled into shout-from-the-balcony choruses--destroys any hint of self-pity. But as Grace searches for a world that would allow her the freedom to be herself, she finds solace in the album's most subdued moment, and it's beautiful and moving.
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Jan 30, 2014This album is powerful, occasionally transcendent, always honest and never less than entertaining.
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Jan 21, 2014Although wrapped in a vague, overarching storyline about a transgender prostitute, Transgender Dysphoria Blues is the strong, strident sound of a heart-on-sleeve artist owning her newfound epiphany.
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Q MagazineFeb 14, 2014Throughout Grace is brave and brutally honest. [Mar 2014, p.107]
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Kerrang!Jan 27, 2014The music and lyrics the band supply to chronicle these periods of confusion and transition are more than enough to steal the show. [11 Jan 2014, p.52]
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Jan 24, 2014After the assimilation of the band into the mainstream rock pool with New Wave and White Crosses, their decision to make a stellar pop-punk record, judged on the quality of its hooks, is a great linear move. 'Blues is a palette cleanser that still causes a ruckus.
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Jan 22, 2014We may want to make Grace a symbol of something, take her struggle with identity and expression and render it a simplified abstraction, but this rollicking, excellent rock record wants none of that. It’s a physical sound, a visceral set of emotions, a complicated set of fears and hopes to grapple with.
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Jan 22, 2014Transgender Dysphoria Blues is another excellent album for Against Me! and one they should be proud of, especially after all of the obstacles they had to climb to get here.
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Jan 21, 2014Through it all, the energy and attitude is unchanged. And although the band’s themes seem even more specifically focused, this album is really for anyone who’s ever felt held back.
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Jan 21, 2014Once it all sinks in, the self-released approach, scrapped-together band, and 29-minute running time should only shock those who expected this to be a huge statement by Grace on anyone's terms but her own. This is no rock opera, no American Idiot, no novelty.
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Jan 21, 2014We can’t choose how we’re made but we can choose what we make, and what Against Me! have crafted here is nothing short of exceptional.
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Jan 17, 2014From the gruesome, sweary brawls to the softer elegies, Transgender Dysphoria Blues comes wrapped in some of the best melodies Grace has penned to date.
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Jan 16, 2014Thrilling, for all the blues.
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Entertainment WeeklyJan 24, 2014Blues is rawer than the band's last two excellent, arena-fied albums. [31 Jan/7 Feb 2014, p.104]
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Jan 24, 2014The band splits the difference between old and new into a compact sound that skews more Sex Pistols than Foo Fighters. It’s comparatively gaunt for Against Me! as of late, but it yields the stage to Grace’s voice, which has never sounded better.
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Mar 10, 2014Grace is in-your-face with an aggressively told tale of selfhood (to say nothing of the heartbreak of loss) at its most exposed and anthemic.
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Feb 27, 2014Transgender Dysphoria Blues isn’t a perfect record, but goddamn if it isn’t an important one, and more worthy of your time than ninety-percent of the more fashionable sounds coming out of whatever Bushwick loft party the Times scopes this weekend.
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Jan 21, 2014It’s Grace’s own personal journey with gender dysphoria in ‘True Trans Soul Rebel’, ‘Paralytic States’ and ‘Drinking With The Jocks’ that has the most impact, though, the latter being the sort of raging polemic that proves the hardcore spirit of Black Flag is still alive and kicking.
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Jan 21, 2014Musically, it sticks to the band's established brand of warrior-cry punk metal.
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Jan 17, 2014There are, unfortunately, a few songs that just don't connect, and when the album ends you're left feeling a bit unsatisfied, which is rare for this band. But it's still a great, short, raw blast of a melodic punk album.
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Jan 16, 2014Transgender Dysphoria Blues demands a more visceral reaction than mere respect. These songs have just as much heart as they do guts, and the LP stands as Against Me!’s first forward looking album since Searching For A Former Clarity.
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Jan 16, 2014Transgender Dysphoria Blues definitely isn’t perfect, but its high points are high enough that even a fuckface like yours truly can’t ignore its flashes of brilliance.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 61 out of 71
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Mixed: 4 out of 71
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Negative: 6 out of 71
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Jan 23, 2014
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Jan 21, 2014
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Jan 21, 2014