EP REVIEW: At War With The Silverfish – Laura Jane Grace

Punk icon LAURA JANE GRACE surprise-released her latest solo album last year, the aptly-named Stay Alive. Its raw, stripped-back honesty was a welcome tonic to the horrors of the year and a frank look at the impact the pandemic was having on musicians and the industry. True to form, she’s now surprise-released a brand new EP, At War With The Silverfish, a collection of songs that she describes as being “of late-night madness and loneliness”. 

Just as its predecessor was, it’s a mostly stripped back affair, never accelerating to quite the same pace or being as full-on as her work with AGAINST ME!. That said, for the most part it loses none of the bite or punk snarl. The songs are mostly short – sticking between one to two minutes bar the occasional exception – giving them the feeling of being flitting thoughts, the “late-night madness” that she describes. 

On opener Three Of Hearts, she sings “Three of Hearts/Two of them are broken/One of them is gold/All of them are worthless”; this vulnerability is a cornerstone of At War With The Silverfish, marking it as a distinctly personal EP much as her recent solo work has been. Lolo 13 dwells on a love that never happened, while Yesterday Pt. II intensely recalls a lover’s goodbye. Amongst the soul searching, there’s also more mundane tales of lockdown life such as Day Old Coffee that describes its subject exactly (“Day old coffee microwaved to boiling”) whilst also looking at the boredom of long periods of isolation.

The short, stream-of-consciousness songs and looking at such simple, often mundane things about daily life during lockdown all makes for a very personal, inward-looking record that’s deeply relatable. The connection LAURA JANE GRACE builds with the listener is borne of the experience we all currently share. At War With The Silverfish seems to stem from a need to create and stay connected during a time of long isolation and there’s a sense of shared humanity throughout, despite its short runtime. 

Rating: 7/10

At War With The Silverfish is out now via Big Scary Monsters.

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