Personal Best (album)

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'Personal Best'

Studio album by Team Dresch

Released

January, 1995

Recorded

1994

Genre

Punk rock

Length

24:14

Professional reviews

Allmusic link

Team Dresch chronology

Hand Granade
(1994)

Personal Best
(1995)

Captain My Captain
(1996)

Personal Best is the debut album by the American punk rock band Team Dresch. The album was released in January 1995 on both singer/guitarist Jody Bleyle's label Candy Ass Records and bassist Donna Dresch's label Chainsaw Records.

Washington Post writer Chris Richards called Personal Best "a fiery, all-but-forgotten punk masterpiece".^[1]

1 Reception
2 Musical style
3 Lyrical content
4 Track listing
5 Personnel
6 References

Reception

Often hailed as a masterpiece, Personal Best is considered by many to be one of the best queercore albums, and a notable achievement within the broader punk subculture itself.^[2] The album also gained popularity in other punk circles, as well as with fans of riot grrrl and indie rock. And while only clocking in at just over 24 minutes, Personal Best was considered groundbreaking within the queercore underground.

Allmusic declared the album is a "call to arms" that "explodes on contact", saying: "Of all the punk records to come out of the 1990s, Personal Best comes closest to actually recapturing the sheer passion and rage which originally spawned the movement two decades earlier..." and praised the band's all-encompassing fusion of the dual emotional and polemical issues felt within the LGBT community, as well as their ability to "never put their politics ahead of their songs — each of these ten tracks is airtight, with melodies as blistering as the lyrics".^[3]

Musical style

The musical style of Personal Best is constantly grounded in punk rock forms, borrowing inspiration from hardcore punk, emocore, and indie rock.

Lead vocalists/guitarists Bleyle and Kaia Wilson (then-girlfriend of artist Tammy Rae Carland) sing openly about personal freedom, love, anger, self-worth, gay liberation, and perseverance, while alternating between melodic harmonies and emotive screaming passages more akin to hardcore punk and emocore. "Growing Up in Springfield" even contains parts verging on jazz-rock, and throughout the album hints of thrash metal, folk-rock, and even pop punk are audible.

Lyrical content

Despite this album's cover art (which infers a battle of the sexes), Team Dresch—like queercore in general—focused primarily on emotional and social issues concerning the LGBT community. The band stood against the discrimination of homosexuality, and encouraged a positive, self-accepting philosophy to be bred within the queer subculture. Consequently, when the album is sold in music stores, it is often labeled with a Parental Advisory warning sticker.

The issues are approached from firsthand angles of hostility, humor, desperation, and optimism. In the first song "Fagetarian and Dyke", Bleyle opens with the quip "How do I do? I don't; fuck you", and also resigns "I heard, I heard everything" as well as reflecting "my heart's dismembered me, testing my love". Amidst the emotional heaviness of the song, Bleyle also jokingly sings, "I spent the last ten days of my life ripping off The Smiths."

"Hate The Christian Right!" incorporates abstract metaphorical lyrics with direct criticisms of Christian conservativism ("can't see what's real, in front of your face") and its irrational condemnation of the narrator merely for "kissin' my girlfriend in the van at some show." "She's Crushing My Mind" concerns a lesbian who is "not happy she was born this way" and "wants to forget it".

The cornerstone of the album appears in the middle. "She's Amazing" begins with Wilson singing deeply reflective lyrics set to a moody melody before the song segues into hard-edged guitar with the falsetto chorus: "She's amazing, her words save me, she holds her head as if it's truth". The lyrics deal with the narrarator's idolization of an unnamed and famous "outspoken" (presumably lesbian, as the narrarator sings "I'm inbetween her") feminist who "many people will try to destroy her but if she were to stop, I'd stop, we'd all stop." A cathartic passage towards the end is arguably one of the album's most passionate moments, and is paired with the album's only guitar solo as Bleyle self-deprecatingly pleads "I gave in—you cannot trust all lies...I always wanted to make sense, do I lose?"

"Fake Fight" and "Growing Up in Springfield" speak about personal alienation acquired from living in a heterocentric, intolerant town. "#1 Chance Pirate TV" praises Sinead O'Connor's controversial 1992 ripping of a photo of Pope John Paul II in protest of the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

"Freewheel", a fan favorite at shows, discusses the self-liberties inherent in existing outside of mainstream society, as well as the frustrations of dating a girl who isn't sure that she is gay ("you can go back to your boyfriend"), "talking with a mad queen about emotional evolution", and being alone with "no money left and a mean world around me."