Album review: Laura Jane Grace In The Trauma Tropes – Adventure Club

This might be the most joyful we’ve ever heard Laura Jane Grace. How could she not be, knocking out these songs in surroundings as idyllic as Greece? After landing an artist residency there last summer, she spent her days swimming in the sea, exploring ancient ruins and then knuckling down to write with her wife Paris Campbell Grace and local punks Jacopo Fokas and Orestis Lagadinos when night fell. Fuelled by the beaming Mediterranean sunshine and the delicious Freddo espressos (locals-only iced coffee with whipped milk), they wrote an ode to on the album, they strike hard, yet with grins on their faces.

Adventure Club is vibrant, but isn’t without venom – when was LJG ever one to sanitise her lyrics anyway? Barbed opener WWIII Revisited moves at a hectic pace and brims with a confrontational yet wry spirit – ‘I don’t want to die in World War Three/I don’t want to kill for blood money,’ she snarls. Later, the raucous Mine Me Mine – a stone's throw from early Green Day – puts capitalist greed into the crosshairs.

Laura is equally ruthless when it comes to her own self-examination. Against the suave, retro groove of Active Trauma, she tears up the futile possibility of escaping past traumas and unpicks her sobriety on New Years Day. ‘The hardest part of getting sober is pouring yourself out of the bottle,’ she confesses, her gravelly tone intertwining with Paris’ higher pitched yet equally coarse vocals (which are, throughout the album, an unexpected highlight).

The piece de resistance is the stupidly catchy Your God (God’s Dick), a bitingly hilarious clapback to the religious zealots who concern themselves a bit too much with trans people’s bodies. ‘Does your God have a big fat dick ‘cos it feels like he’s fucking me/Are his balls filled with lightning? Do they dangle like heaven’s keys?’

Equally triumphant is Wearing Black, an uproarious celebration of Pride as a punk saluting the 'leather daddies and diesel dykes' that represents Laura at her most carefree. Sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s silly, but it’s clear how much fun and she and the Trauma Tropes are having – and it’s impossible not to share in it.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Against Me!, Codefendants, PUP

Adventure Club is released on July 18 via Polyvinyl Record Co.