News

​Laura Jane Grace (Against Me!, The Devouring Mothers) teamed up with Polyvinyl and Big Scary Monsters for the release of her brand new solo album titled ​'Stay Alive'.

Across the 14 songs that comprise ​'Stay Alive​', Grace takes all her pent-up fears, anger, and anxiety and releases it, like an olive branch to the weary listeners who are feeling those exact same ways. The songs are documents of a time and a songwriter who experienced enough to find levity in the simple act of doing work. Recorded with nothing more than an acoustic guitar, an occasional drum machine, and her own powerful voice, Grace’s distinct songwriting signature is front and centre.

Laura Jane Grace wasn’t planning on making a solo record this year. In fact, she was planning on making a record with ​Against Me!​, the band she’s fronted for the past 23 years. But clearly, nothing went according to plan this year. ​“We came home from the Against Me! tour we were on in March, and right before we left, we had been in the studio working on songs, and I had been working on them for months prior,” says Grace. As she sat at home, all of her tours cancelled, and the members of Against Me!—as well as her other band Laura Jane Grace & The Devouring Mothers—spread across the US, she was left with a batch of songs and no band to record them with.

“I sat around for a month-and-a-half at a home just being shell-shocked being like, ‘What the fuck happened and what the fuck is happening with the world?’ As I started to get my bearings, I just came to the realization that waiting was going to kill the record and kill the songs. I spent two years working on all these songs, and the idea of throwing them away didn’t sit well with me,” says Grace. ​“But then I was like, ‘What am I waiting for?’ All I have to do is adjust my scope. I can sit here on my fucking ass and do nothing, or I can work.”

So, Grace got to work. She picked up the phone and booked four days with the famed Steve Albini and ​Electrical Audio to document these songs exactly as she’d been playing them in her home, straight to analog tape.