“What happened to us? What happened to something that never was?” asks Laura Jane Grace in the opening lines to “Crash,” the second single from the upcoming Against Me! album Shape Shift With Me. It’s a question with multiple interpretations — a kiss-off to fans who aren’t enjoying the band’s new sound (some of whom are already populating the YouTube comments on this video), and, of course, there’s an obvious link to be made with Grace coming out as trans.
Such weighty matters seem a long way from the band’s mind in this video, though, which was released today and is a blast — it finds Grace and her bandmates wearing decidedly KISS-esque makeup and jumping around like they don’t have a single care int he world. And then, as if that wasn’t enough fun, it pivots at the end into a brief bit of Star Wars cosplay. It looks like fun being in Against Me! these days, which perhaps wasn’t always the case in the past, and anyone who begrudges the band that could probably do with re-examining their priorities, no?