Starting with Searching for a Former Clarify, the quality of everything went way up. Everyone kind of holds onto things that are old and aesthetically junky because it's honest and raw and a lot of bands start sounding better at the expense of those things.
Against Me! matured the right way. They got better at instruments, better at song writing, improved the quality of their recordings...everything. Lyrically, the first two albums are a joke compared to the later stuff.
I don't even think Eternal Cowboy is a good album at all, so it's just like a couple songs on Axl Rose that make the old sound worth going back to.