Against Me may still be on hiatus, but Laura Jane Grace’s latest, Hole In My Head – a brilliant mix of humor, spite and self-preservation – is strong enough to make you forget you were even waiting for a reunion.
Her first record since 2021’s At War With The Silverfish, Hole in My Head is still in keeping with the more scaled-down acoustic vibe of her previous solo efforts, but is just as puck rock lyrically and emotionally as Against Me’s Reinventing Axl Rose or White Crosses. In fact, “I’m Not a Cop,” which includes a 1950s style guitar riff and “pig, pig, pig, piggie, piggie, piggie” doo wop backing vocals, sounds even more subversive than the same lyrics over a screaming distorted guitar. Elsewhere on “Punk Rock In Basements,” she sings about her early punk rock memories backed by hand claps and jangly guitar.
There is a lot to love about this record, but the two big highlights here are “Tacos And Toast,” with Grace singing dryly and matter of fact about getting a line tattooed through an ex’s name so they “will be read as a clear mistake,” is a savage blow cementing this as a breakup song for punks for years to come. And “Dysphoria Hoodie,” a song she previewed live on a brief solo tour last year, is easily one of her most satisfying confessional singalongs about coping strategies since her stellar Transgender Dysmorphia Blues a decade ago.
Along with vocals and guitar, Grace plays drums throughout while Drive-By Truckers’ bassist Matt Patton joins her for half the songs on the record. Hole In My Head serves as a roaming punk singer’s travelogue of sorts as the album was written as Grace was traveling the globe. The punchy “Birds Talk Too,” for example, was written in Amsterdam and commemorates her experience of having her head shaved and tattooed by a famed Japanese artist. “Tacos and Toast” was written in Garce’s sometime home of St. Louis – the same place she recorded the album. “St. Louis really opened its arms to me and I just have such a great time when I’m there. It’s a really special city,” she says. “To me, it feels like the way every city in America felt when I first started touring in the late-‘90s, and this crazy mix of fun and adventure, but danger and possibility.”
Appropriately enough, fun and adventurous are two pretty apt descriptions of Hole In My Head, a stylistically elastic record that covers folk, pop and rock all filtered through the experiences of a lifelong punk rocker.
