Album Review: Tacocat – This Mess Is A Place

When Seattle’s Tacocat first started in 2007, the world they were responding to was vastly different from the current scene of diverse voices they’ve helped foster. 2019 will see the release of This Mess Is A Place, Tacocat’s fourth full-length and first on Sub Pop, that is due out on the 3rd May. The album finds the band waking up the morning after the 2016 US 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 center, with new tragedies and civil rights assaults filling up the scroll of the newsfeed every day. This Mess Is A Place is an album of socially conscious pop-punk that possesses lyrics that are honest and often darkly humorous, they mingle brightness, energy and hope in a world that is trying to deal with tragedies, assaults on civil liberties and blatant evil. On the one hand they also sing about the often magical connections people feel with their pets, whilst on the other they’re looking for humour in a world where there is very little.

Bouncy drums, catchy guitar riffs, rumbling bass lines and the melodic voice of Emily Nokes make This Mess Is A Place an album that could be regarded simply as perfect grungy pop until you dig deeper and take in the lyrics. “If I wasn’t on the battleground/I bet I could of gone to space by now,” which examines the contrast between the privileged who never experience disadvantage and those battling the system. “Truth spread so thin it stops existing” needs no explanation and nor does the exclamation “Don’t forget to remember who the fuck you are,” that leaps out from the track Grains Of Sand. In the words of Emily 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 can be pre-ordered via Sub Pop Records here