What do you do when your hipster-approved punk band ascends from relative obscurity to widespread commercial success? If you’re Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel, whose Gainesville band blew up with last year’s excellent full-length New Wave — and its catchy party-girl-grown-old hit single “Thrash Unreal” — you return to your folk roots and issue the ass-stomping, street-cred-bolstering, solo EP Heart Burns. Over mostly strident acoustic guitar strumming, the bear-voiced singer bellows about familiar themes like the casualties of war, cramming words like “xenophobia” and “ennobled” into pop songs — making it sound nearly as natural as rhyming “moon” and “spoon.” No small feat. At the heart of the disc is the haunting, harmonica-laced “Anna Is a Stool Pigeon.” It’s an instant-classic screed against the real-life FBI informant simply known to jurors as "Anna,” who last year sent her lover Eric McDavid away for up to 20 years. Sounding like he’s on the verge of bashing a foe’s face into a bar counter, Gabel growls killer lines like, “Anna thinks she’s a hawk, but she’s just a fucking snitch.” Menacing and melodic, it’s a protest song that ranks high in the pantheon of middle-fingers to The Man. (Sire) ***1/2
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2008.