Review: We Are the Union – “Ordinary Life”

Bad Time – 04 June 2021

An unlikely pairing of genre and subject matter makes for a groundbreaking ska album.

This is not the first album I’ve heard about the topic of coming out as a trans woman. Following Against Me!’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues and Nervus’s Everything Dies, I think We Are The Union’s Ordinary Life comes in as the third album I’ve ever listened to on the topic. However, it does hold two distinctions in this category: 1. It’s definitely the first ska album I’ve ever heard on the subject, and 2. It’s the first album I’ve heard on this subject that I didn’t know was about being a trans woman when I started listening to it. In fact, I had never listened to We Are The Union before. I just saw someone post about it in a punk rock vinyl collectors group I’m in on Facebook saying that it was a good ska album, and I was intrigued by a ska band putting out a record with a lavender cover with a picture of flowers on it, and I started listening to it out of curiosity. By the time I finished a delightful little trans rights song called “Boys Will Be Girls” and it was followed up immediately by a song with the lyrics “Please inject me with iced coffee and estrogen,” I wondered if I wasn’t listening to one of my own kind. I looked it up and, sure enough, this was a highly anticipated album I had just stumbled into, with lead singer Reade Wolcott recently coming out as a trans woman.

Ordinary Life is proof that genre, not unlike gender, can be what you make it. With more voices in punk talking about the trans experience since Laura Jane Grace kicked the proverbial door down in 2014, Wolcott finds herself in the unique position of being at the front of a ska-punk band, which is not a genre known for introspection and delicate, personal stories. Wolcott proves that ska is a much more versatile genre than a certain famous meme about 13 year olds and mozzarella sticks gives it credit for. The lyrics are bold, yet graceful, demonstrating that true poetry pairs perfectly  well with any style of music.

“Boys Will Be Girls” is not a song that a cis ally could have gotten away with as well as a trans person can, because a lot of people would say that trans people don’t start as one gender and then become another gender, we simply come to an eventual realization of what gender we’ve always been. Trans people get a little bit more leeway to say things like “I used to be a boy” because a big part of the LGBTQIA+ culture is defining your own identity and experience. But then, few could complain about “Big River,” a nice, slow reggae tune with one of the most poignant descriptions of gender dysphoria that I’ve ever heard set to music. Other songs like “Morbid Obsessions” are more subtle and make you go through multiple listens before you realize it’s about dysphoria, although the chorus of “If I get one life, I’m gonna do what I want” speaks pretty clearly to the trans experience. Not everything is directly about the trans experience on this record, but even “Short Circuit” and “Broken Brain,” which are about mental illness, and “Wasted,” which is about addiction, speak to experiences that are not exclusive to, but are certainly common amongst, trans people.

I feel like my curiosity over the ska album with the lavender cover was fairly justified and paid off because this is a very different type of ska album to the kind I grew up with. Never have I heard anyone tell such an intimate story within the ska genre before, but I should have known that, if punk could tell that kind of story, ska certainly could as well. Ordinary Life is a surprising album, but the biggest surprise is how effortlessly it works. This album could mark a major turning point in the trajectory of the genre by showing how much more ska is capable of. Happy Pride Month, everyone!