Choices, Chances, Changes: Singles & Comptracks 1994-2000

This history of Team Dresch’s singles and compilation contributions begins with the band’s debut, the Hand Grenade + 2 7” on Kill Rock Stars. Released in 1994, the EP features Spinanes’ Scott Plouf filling in on drums for the mid-tempo earworm title track, as well as the slow and moody closer, “Molasses In January”, with the quick and furious “Endtime Relay” punctuating the EP’s flow and providing a nice fit with “Seven”, the similarly-raging contribution to that same year’s Rock Stars Kill compilation. Also released in 1994 was YoYo Records’ Periscope: Another Yoyo Compilation, which featured the dynamic “Fake Fight”, a track that would resurface as one of the anchors of 1995’s masterful Personal Best full-length.

“Song For Anne Bannon” is originally from 1995’s Free To Fight! Self Defense For Women And Girls compilation on Candy-Ass Records. The song is in tribute to author Ann Weldy (pen name: Ann Bannon), who wrote highly influential lesbian pulp fiction series The Beebo Brinker Chronicles from 1957 to 1962. Moving on to 1996, “What Can A Lover Do? originates from the four-way split 7” on Marigold Records, which also featured F-80, Shove and The Dahlia Seed.

The remaining four tracks represent the second, late-90s incarnation of Team Dresch following Kaia’s departure. The powerful “It’s A Conversation” hails from a split 7” with Longstocking, released by Sub Pop in 1998. That year also saw the excellent The New Team Dresch V 6.0 Beta 7” on Outpunk, providing two true-to-form rockers “Deattached” and “Venus Lacy”. “Temporary Insurance” would be Team Dresch’s final proper studio release and would drop two years later in 2000 via one side of a split 7” with The Automaticans on Mental Monkey Records.

From “Hand Grenade” to “Temporary Insurance”, Team Dresch’s highly emotive, tightly-wound and put simply, very loud punk rock was an unprecedented type of vehicle for which to deliver the band’s profoundly prescient messages and identity, one that resonates deeply with our current times. That this music was made approximately a quarter-century in the past is an astonishing thing to wrap one’s head around. That it went somewhat overlooked in its day is not terribly surprising, given that it was probably a little too “ahead of its time”, so to speak. Throughout the 1994 - 2000 timeline traversed by this compilation, Team Dresch created a song cycle that plays through with the intensity and influence of both Personal Best and Captain My Captain.

- Andrew Earles, February 2019