The opening track, and recent single, ‘Hologram’ sets the tone for This Mess Is A Place.  I hesitate to call Tacocat’s sound “pop punk” because of the baggage that tag carries with it.  They are far removed from the shrill, over-produced, homogenised, production line mentality one associates with that genre but they are nonetheless a pop band who play with a punk approach.  The palm-muted power chords, heavy choruses and three part harmonies all suggest pop punk without becoming it.  They blend indie singer-songwriter lyrics and melodies with power pop choruses, and play grungy guitars under it all. 

The grunge label is one that fits This Mess Is A Place much more comfortably.  It helps that it’s being released on Seattle’s Sub Pop label too.  With the variety of styles and multiple songwriters, the record sounds like a mixtape of ‘90s alternative rock with Weezer songs followed by The Breeders, and The Raincoats next to Veruca Salt.  Throw in Nirvana, Hole and The Vaselines et voila, you’ve got the new Tacocat LP.

Tacocat tread new ground on each track. Working within the confines of a basic rock guitar/bass/drums setup, they throw in some light funk a la Tom Tom Club on ‘Grains Of Salt’ to great effect. The Infectious chorus and sweet groove make if feel like Led Zeppelin’s ‘D’yer Maker’. Elsewhere we get some Ronnie Spector style vocals on current single, ‘The Joke Of Life’, over a Ramones guitar riff; very End Of The Century. The twin guitars work in counterpoint, lifting the chorus of ‘Rose Colored Sky’ to euphoric heights and ‘Crystal Ball’ is another classic pop tune, with Tacocat channelling the Buckingham/Nicks era Fleetwood Mac,but the punk roots that underlie This Mess Is A Place come to the fore on ‘Phantom’.

Finishing off the LP, ‘Miles and Miles’, shouldn’t work.  Slow ballads and distortion pedals go together as well as yesterday’s fish pie and the office microwave but somehow they manage, just about, to pull it off.  It certainly doesn’t hurt that it sounds so much like Weezer’s blue album opener ‘My Name Is Jonah’.  I reached for the skip button during the first listen but ‘Miles and Miles’ endures.  As a closing track it works, aided by the identifiable chorus, “The days dragged, but the years have flown by”

This Mess Is A Place is a sunny collection of tunes and arrives at the first weekend in May.  The timing could hardly be better.  This is best listened to while walking down sunny city streets or lazing in the garden.  Or by the pool, if you are so inclined. There isn’t a bad song on here. I have now listened to this record ten times in a row without skipping a track. That is the best recommendation I could give any album.

You can pre-order This Mess Is A Place here

Seattle band Tacocat are set to release This Mess Is a Place, their new full-length album Friday, May 3. The sparkly new album is their first for Sub Pop, and heralds a more pop-driven and ebullient direction in their sound. You can read our review here next week. Before that, the band are sharing ‘The Joke of Life’, the third and final pre-release single from the record.

When vocalist Emily Nokes, bassist Bree McKenna, guitarist Eric Randall, and drummer Lelah Maupin first started in 2007, the world they were responding to was vastly different from the current Seattle scene of diverse voices they’ve helped foster. Every step along the way has been a seamless progression—from silly songs about Tonya Harding and psychic cats to calling out catcallers and poking fun at entitled weekend-warrior tech jerks on their last two records on Hardly Art, 2014’s NVM and 2016’s Lost Time.

This Mess Is a Place, Tacocat’s fourth full-length and first on Sub Pop, finds the band waking up the morning after the 2016 election and figuring out how to respond to a new reality where evil isn’t hiding under the surface at all—it’s front and centre, with new tragedies and civil rights assaults filling up the scroll of the newsfeed every day.

Despite current realities being depressing enough to make anyone want to crawl under the covers and sleep for a thousand years, Tacocat are doing what they’ve always done so well: mingling brightness, energy, and hope with political critique. This Mess Is a Place is charged with a hopefulness that stands in stark contrast to music that celebrates apathy, despair, and numbness.

Producer Erik Blood (who also produced Lost Time) brings the band into their full pop potential but still preserves what makes Tacocat so special: they’re four friends who met as young punks and have grown together into a truly collaborative band. Says Nokes: “We can examine some hard stuff, make fun of some evil stuff, feel some soft feelings, feel some rage feelings, feel some bitter-ass feelings, sift through memories, feel wavy-existential, and still go get a banana daiquiri at the end.”

 ‘This Mess Is a Place’ track list:

1. Hologram

2. New World

3. Grains of Salt

4. The Joke of Life

5. Little Friend

6. Rose Colored Sky

7. Phantom

8. Crystal Ball

9. Meet Me at La Palma

10. Miles and Miles