Juliana Hatfield: Dumb Fun
[purchase]
Hatfield's heavy indierock at its best: a proto-hipster anti-commericalist anthem turned out in low-tuned electric fuzz and feedback. This roller coaster of a song, and the amazingly potent scream that is 1995 release Only Everything, totally got me through young adulthood -- the song, and the memory of meeting Juliana Hatfield and Evan Dando wandering the halls of that same school afterhours one day near the end of my senior year, just me and these new grunge gods hanging in the hallway. They thought I was a teacher, maybe. Now I am.
Also incredible, and thematically relevant: the languid, muffled cry of rage that is Dying Proof, off the same album.