THE LEG UP / Stephen M. Deusner

ILL PENICILL’

Sometimes a moldy oldie is the best medicine.

Generally, this Blurt blog (Blurg? Shoot me.) will look months ahead to get a sense of highly anticipated albums, but every once in a while, I’ll look back at an older album that I’ve recently discovered or rediscovered. Or, hell, just something I found in the $1 bin. Don’t hold me to this, but I’m going to try to keep it older than a decade and fairly obscure. Nothing like “Hey, remember Funeral?”

Team Dresch

Personal Best

(Chainsaw Records, 1995)

I went through a riot grrrl phase for a few weeks last year, trying to get my head around a genre I didn’t countenance too much the first time around. So I dipped into Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and early Sleater-Kinney (that self-titled album… not so hot), but Personal Best stuck with me beyond that early burst of interest. It’s one of those albums that could inspire a dissertation on queer identity and feminist politics. There’s even a line that goes “Half of this is me and I’m not sure who the other is,” “other” being an academically loaded word. But who wants to read a dissertation on a Friday? These songs wouldn’t have stuck with me—and I wouldn’t be writing about them now—if Team Dresch hadn’t given them so much emotional heft and desperate viscerality. Opener “Fagetarian & Dyke” admits early to career misgivings, wondering if ten years of little sleep and Smiths rip-offs was worth it; the verses are urgent, melodic, almost diaristic, but the choruses abruptly loud, messy, cathartic. There’s fury in their populism, as they lace those excoriating guitars with pop-song ba-ba-ba’s on “She’s Crushing My Mind” or Breeders-style B-side jangle on “Freewheel.” Only “#1 Chance Pirate TV” doesn’t survive the 13-year interval between then and now, but it was designed to be topical: Referring to an event three years earlier, the lyrics imagine a television station that shows Sinead O’Connor ripping up the Pope instead of lame late-night skits. Personal Best ultimately lived up to its name, a rock album that looms large over its genre (if not, sadly, over the ‘90s in general). Even removed from that context, though, it still rages eloquently.

Stephen M. Deusner is a freelance music journalist based in Washington, DC. Don't ask him about Norwegian pop or house rabbits, unless you have a few hours.