Queercore | Team Dresch: The beauty of equality

For a queer youth in the country, the right song at the right moment can make all the difference: Team Dresch. Photo: Facebook/Team Dresch A quality of punk that is rarely sung about is its life-saving potential. Especially in adolescence: Hardly any young person, as long as they are awake and empathetic, manages to grow up without at least temporarily brushing against or falling into despair. This is even more true if the prefabricated paths of the majority don't suit you and you grow up in an area where deviations are not allowed. For a rural queer youth, the right song at the right moment can make all the difference.

The queercore band Team Dresch obviously knows about the gift that punk can mean for outsiders who are placed wrongly in the world. The first song on their new album “Furthermore”, the first in 30 years, is addressed directly to the listener: “Some people say you only write one song/ And that feels true/ And I do it for you/ The lonely young one/ That was me”. That sounds just as empowering today as it did in the mid-90s. And it's also consistent in 2026 because Team Dresch think about their own growing older in the second verse: "We got old/ And all this shit happened/ And there was grief/ And we lost who we were/ The wild young ones that were broken/ who were open/ who were feral."

It is important to show your children the beauty of the world. Why else should you fight?

Now everything is back, and Team Dresch has managed, as far as I can see, the only punk reunion that has nothing at all nostalgic and sounds as if the band was making exactly the right, fitting music for this time. Maybe because no one here acts like they're young.

The songs on »Furthermore« convey knowledge about political struggles, self-empowerment, the history of the queer community in the USA and gender politics in general. Queercore emerged in the late 80s. Bands like Pansy Division, Tribe 8 and Team Dresch. Queercore songs about sexual identity, gay and lesbian desire and homophobia worked both externally and internally: as support in dealing with parents and school bullies and as an antidote to the forced heterosexual dominance in their own subculture.

Team Dresch released two albums during their first run, 1995 and 1996. Both are inexhaustible sources of euphoric noise pop, aggressive Dresch guitars and beautiful melodies. At the concerts that Team Dresch played in Germany in September, you could hear and see what makes these songs indestructible.

The guitars not only riff on something, but also create different textures, the bass - Mike Watt school - is not just a rhythm and humming instrument, but always plays an additional melody. And the now two drummers hold everything together with precision. The band's musical ingenuity is reminiscent of the SST bands of the 80s - the impact of Hüsker Dü, the joy of playing of the Minutemen.

All of this then results in excess energy. Team Dresch's life-saving moment is not only contained in the lyrics, but also in the music. The joy of life that resonates here, despite all the knowledge about the overall social and political shit, is enormous. Team Dresch bassist/guitarist/singer Jody Bleyle then reminded the parents present at the concert in the Bremer Tower how important it is to show their children the beauty of the world. Because why else should you fight? Or just bring children into the world?

The beauty of this band also lies in their insistence on equality. Live it becomes clear that Team Dresch have gone beyond the limitations of simple punk songs from their first album onwards. Also in the sense that the community idea not only applied to their own scene, but also to their own band. The instruments move between Bleyle and Kaia Wilson and Donna Dresch, and the singing also takes turns. And because Marcéo Martinez played drums on the first Team Dresch album in 1995 and Melissa York on the second one in 1996, both of them simply play on “Furthermore” and then come along on tour.

The songs talk about the experiences of lesbian women, but they also discuss things beyond that. Team Dresch have written some of the most beautiful songs about adolescence, despair and alienation from the world. Back then, they caught you regardless of your sexual preference. “My mom says she loves me/ But I don’t think it’s love/ Cause she only loves me/ When I act just like she does,” sings Jody Bleyle in “Uncle Phranc.” And in the final line – “And that’s emotional blackmail!” – the voice rises in such a defensive and combative way that you know that you will also survive your own family and will be happy at some point.

Team Dresch can also play the rock bottom songs in such a way that hope and trust in the world spread throughout the concert hall. »My girlfriend cuddles me/ And holds me when I cry/ I tell her that I’m scared/ Ask if she thinks I’ll die«. Then the voice rises again and takes the listener with it: “She tells me I’m okay/ I don’t believe her/ but it makes me feel better anyway.”

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