Dump Him - Dykes to Watch Out For (2019)

Building on the legacy of ’90s riot grrrl and queercore, the Massachusetts punks’ debut album is a galvanizing thrill that insists on naming what some would ignore.

The easiest analog to DUMP HIM’s debut LP, Dykes to Watch Out For, is ’90s riot grrrl and queercore—the Massachusetts punk quartet named their label after a Team Dresch song. But easiest doesn’t mean exact, and while DUMP HIM borrow from and build on a legacy, DTWOF traffics in internet-age subjects: climate anxiety, Alison Bechdel (the album shares its title with her long-running comic strip), and self-preservation in the face of disenfranchisement. Earnest and referential, it’s a 23-minute elegy for past selves, a fuzzy, distorted paean to loss and regeneration.

DTWOF is built on the same four(ish) chord progressions that have powered many a power-pop anthem, but the lyrics are as sharp as touching a bruise. These are songs to scream with, and their elegant expressions of rage sound like arguments rehearsed for weeks in the shower. “Vilify, refuse to contemplate possible mistakes,” Jac Walsh sings coolly on “Ache,” “but keep making your own, it’s okay.” Terms like trauma, detachment, and embodiment might sound like pop-psych jargon in less capable hands, but the band weaves them seamlessly into depictions of angst and pain. This is heavier than pedestrian heartbreak.

Like Gauche, another queer outfit addressing the junctures of the personal and political, DUMP HIM blend contemporary omens with private dramas. “Panic over now-pointless archives/The fragility of our ability to thrive/Doomsday prepping in my bedroom/Breaking down over what we can’t do,” Walsh sings on “Judi Bari Almost Died for Our Sins,” an homage to the Earth First! activist who narrowly survived a 1990 car bombing that was never solved. It’s easy to lose these lyrical pearls in the musical fury, but all the more rewarding to excavate them over multiple listens. Matched with the songs’ furious pace, the references urge a confrontation with history: Who do you remember? Who forms your canon?

Though the majority of tracks burst with a similar fervor, closer “Don’t Kiss Me, I’m in Training” is a sweet, refreshing exception. Backed by harmonist Briar Lake, Walsh and Mattie Hamer’s duet sounds like a ’50s ballad at a radical prom. “It isn’t easy to be around people/When people have caused all the hell that you’ve been through,” Hamer sings. The tempo picks up as Walsh and Hamer consider the ways trauma—yes, that word—warps our ability to love the people trying their best to love us back.

The individual songs on DTWOF might not sear quite as hot as they do together. But each is a galvanizing thrill, insisting on naming what some would ignore. DUMP HIM offer recognition, a sound and voice for the ways the world shapes and silences those of us on the margins.