Team Dresch

The Third Sex at Zebulon

Team Dresch

Longstocking

The Third Sex

To say Team Dresch were/are a political band is to miss the point. As they reminded in their great 1996 epistolary anthem “To the Enemies of Political Rock,” not singing about causes is a political statement, of acceptance of the status quo. In “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” America, Team Dresch did not have the luxury of complacency if they wanted to sing about the most basic of lyrical themes: Love. For four young women who love other women, choosing whether to sing their hearts out “can feel like a choice between pleasure and existence,” as Jody Bleyle evocatively expressed in “Political Rock.” Or, as they sang a little less politely in the same song: “Just own it you little slacker fuck.”

Listening to Team Dresch’s 1990s albums and singles two decades later, I’m struck by the way in which they’ve gained, not lost, power. Combining the brazenness of Riot Grrrl with the angst dirge of grunge, Team Dresch didn’t just raise the stakes of queercore: They created two near-perfect albums about longing, freedom, and belonging over guitar riffs as epic and intense as Bleyle and Kaia Wilson’s poetic couplets. In the hands of Janis Ian or k.d. lang, or Tegan and Sara, songs like “She’s Crushing My Mind” and “Yes I am Too But Who Am I Really?” might have been ballads. Inspired by punk and metal, Team Dresch played them as bone crush