‘In My Room’ With Laura Jane Grace

Laura Jane Grace and her Devouring Mothers bandmates Atom Willard and Marc Jacob Hudson perform together for the first time in over a year on the latest installment of Rolling Stone’s In My Room series.

The band filmed the performance at Grace’s home in Chicago, and opened with a rendition of “The Swimming Pool Song.” The song appears on Grace’s surprise solo album, Stay Alive, which she released last October.

The band then slipped into “Reality Bites,” a soulful tune from the Devouring Mothers’ 2018 debut, Bought to Rot. To close it out Grace, and Co. bashed out a thrilling rendition of the Against Me! favorite, “Sink, Florida, Sink,” complete with a requisite hand-clap breakdown toward the end. (“Maybe you know the name of this one,” Grace quipped as an introduction).

Stay Alive marked Grace’s first album since Bought to Rot. Recorded with Steve Albini, it largely features unreleased songs Grace had amassed over the years. “It doesn’t matter what the songs are about, you know? Like it doesn’t fucking matter,” she told Rolling Stone last year. “It’s just about the act of staying alive. I know I’m alive if I’m playing songs. If I’m recording the songs. If I’m making a record. I don’t want the music industry to die. I don’t want to see bands disappearing. And the only way I know how to fight against that is to play music. Is to record music. Is to keep trying.”