Excuse 17 - Such Friends Are Dangerous

 1995; 13 tracks  Angry girls. Angry girls everywhere. Excuse 17 was a Washington-based trio including Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein, Becca Albee, and drummer CJ Phillips. Such Friends Are Dangerous was their first album.

"It's a disservice to remember this band solely as the practice run at Sleater-Kinney, but then again, S-K were so monumental, so earth-shaking that it can hardly end up any other way. Listening to this again for the first time in ten or so years, I'm amazed at how well-formed, confident, and bone-cuttingly visceral they were. Of the two pre-Sleater-Kinney bands, (we'll get to Corin's Heavens to Betsy tomorrow), Excuse 17 sound the most like what's to come, with their dual, tangled, razor-wire guitar attack, back and forth vocals, gut-wrenching screams, and sense of moral urgency. Like much of the work Carrie's associated with, it's an album of catharsis. Whether on the bouncy standout track "Watchmaker" (a dig at music journalists and scenesters), the painful "This is Not Your Wedding Song," or the biting "The Drop Dead Look," their combination of pure punk fury and tight musicianship is some pretty righteous shit, no matter what came next."
 he'll say anything to get inside of you