About
Against Me!
Label: Sire
For Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel, sometimes you have to get the hell, outjust to find your way back in. The past 12 years have seen Gabel rise from
acoustic folk-punk gunslinger in the dives of Gainesville, Florida to releasing
Against Me!’s four searing, blood-smeared slices of scrappy punk. The last of
which, 2007’s New Wave, was the major label debut, one that Spin magazine
anointed as their Album Of The Year. And while Gainesville was home, Gabel felt
the walls closing in when touring for New Wave came to an end. So he split. With
his wife, he left behind the “didja-hear-about-so-and-so” insular Gainesville world
for the sleepy beach town of St. Augustine, wandering the streets and driving
dusty back roads: searching, pining, hoping for inspiration.
He found it in spades. The result is White Crosses, as powerful and as bold a
rock record as one can imagine. The band -– Gabel, guitarist James Bowman,
bassist Andrew Seward and new drummer George Rebelo – roar like fighter jets
screaming over a stadium on the anthemic title-track (with its shout along line
about smashing the 4,000 crosses on a local church’s lawn, ones that signify the
number of babies aborted each day in the U.S.). Joining that is the escapist fury
of “Spanish Moss,” and the short stick of dynamite, “Rapid Decompression.” New
Wave eschewed some of the roughness of the band’s earlier efforts, but White
Crosses goes even further in filling out the band’s wallop. With its twinkling piano
and a glorious whoa-oa chorus, “Because Of The Shame” could be an outtake
from Bruce Springsteen’s classic Born To Run. “Ache With Me” is a slow-jam that
would make Paul Westerberg blush, while “High Pressure Low” is Billy Idol meets
fellow Gainesville native Tom Petty. “This is my Florida record,” says Gabel. “"I
spent a lot of time writing this record while driving directionless on forgotten
Florida state roads, highly caffeinated, with albums like [Petty's] Full Moon Fever
blasting on my stereo."
Producer Butch Vig – who also helmed New Wave – pushed the band to make
White Crosses more dynamic while retaining the bruising roundhouse rights
they’ve thrown since their 2001 debut Reinventing Axl Rose. "Looking at it now
I think [Vig] was a little conservative with New Wave. He didn't want to come
in and scare us, says Gabel. "I think it was an unspoken agreement this time
around that we were going to push ourselves farther than we ever had before. No
direction was off limits. I'm not afraid of melody. I have visions of playing these
songs in stadiums, looking out and seeing an ocean of people singing along."
Every band talks about their new record being that giant step forward. It’s one
of the most hackneyed clichés in rock & roll. And few bands have the chops to
back it up, but Gabel can, due to his growing maturity as a songwriter. Many of
his previous lyrics were screed n’ splatter, so acutely in tune with his own and his
band’s emotions that they were tough to penetrate. A sign of a great songwriter
is one who takes something specific and makes it universal without resorting to
tired tricks. On White Crosses, Gabel delivers. “New Wave was very much about
my band and the music industry and once I had a little distance from it, I realized
that it didn’t connect with some people,” he says. “With White Crosses, there was
a real desire to abandon the storyline. I just wanted to wipe the slate clean and
not think about any of that.”
Gabel’s writing prowess is most apparent on White Crosses’ centerpiece track,
the sparkle-to-a-scream “We’re Breaking Up.” Ostensibly about the demise of
Against Me! but it’s couched vaguely enough so that it could be gleaned as a
tear-soaked ode to the demise of a romantic relationship. “It’s very much about
what we were going through as a band over the past year,” says Gabel. "I was
drawing from those experiences but at the same time I didn't want the song to be
relatable to by only us. I wanted to open the sentiment up into something more
universal."
That passion and verve is something that has never wavered with Against Me!
Fueling that is the notion that Gabel hasn’t drawn a line in the sand for just
himself, but also for his wife and infant daughter (Seward is also expecting his
first child in August). "It gives you a different sense of purpose. It's always going
to be important to me to question authority. But I want to do so in a way that is
smart and honest to myself." he says. "If we were to come out now with our fifth
record, screaming fuck the system! Now we really mean it! I'd feel like I was
pandering to a scene I no longer feel a part of. I want to write without limitation. I
want to let every thought in my head pour out onto the paper. Take a step back
and figure out what I'm trying to say."
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Past Events
26
Mar
2014
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The Commodore Ballroom
13
Apr
2013
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15
Sep
2008
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Jun
2005
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