CD of The Week

While Against Me! has been on an ongoing hiatus, Laura Jane Grace has been incredibly prolific. Just last year, she released the solo album Hole in My Head and followed it up with the Give an Inch EP, credited to Laura Jane Grace & the Mississippi Medicals. Also in 2024, she participated in an art project in Greece at the invitation of the Onassis Foundation, turning a Greek poem titled “Walls” into a song. That session snowballed into a full album, backed by her wife Paris Campbell Grace and a rhythm section of punks from Greece, bassist Jacopo Fokas and drummer Orestis Lagadinos. The result is Adventure Club, the nickname they came up with for this European escapade.

Adventure Club opens with “WWIII Revisited,” thrashing around in the anxiety of the head-spinning world we’re living in today, where Laura Jane declares, "I don't wanna die in World War III and I don't wanna kill for blood money!" “Wearing Black” is a cheeky take on the punks and goths joining in Pride month celebrations, with the key line being, “I'll wear my rainbow another day/My pride's a riot, it's not a parade." For “Active Trauma,” Laura said she wanted to recreate the punchy dynamics of Elastica’s classic debut album in this hooky track about mental health and panic attacks. “Mine Me Mine” is an attack on unfettered greed and bottomless capitalism, now that “They found a way/To make more money than they'll ever need/Now that they have found a way/They're gonna charge you double for everything.”

Multiple tracks on Adventure Club find Laura Jane grappling with substance abuse issues, including (as you’d expect) “I Love to Get High” and “Poison In Me.” Then there’s the humorous and blasphemous “Your God (God’s Dick),” which caught the attention of Fox News after Laura played it opening up for Bernie Sanders. However, buried in the profane track are legit questions about gender and theology. On the other hand, “Espresso Freddie” is clearly an inside joke within the band about drinking coffee in Greece and could’ve probably been relegated as a B-side. The only full acoustic song on the record, “Free Cigarettes,” tackles the pros, cons, and more cons of life as a touring musician in this difficult era of the music business. And the aforementioned “Walls,” which kicked off the whole project, appropriately wraps up the record as a muscular, heavy, and memorable closer.

Unfortunately, this review comes with an unpleasant postscript, as the day before Adventure Club’s release, Laura Jane and Paris had their personal issues laid out publicly across social media and it appears the couple is splitting up. However, putting all that aside, Adventure Club is a varied, wild ride, veering between humor and heartbreak, and another worthy addition to LJG’s ever-expanding catalog.