One of feminism’s biggest hurdles has always been that it isn’t allowed to be fun. Tacocat gives that notion precisely the credence that it deserves by ignoring it altogether and making unselfconscious pop songs about Plan B, night swimming, high school horse girls, and the bridge-and-tunnel bros who turn their neighborhood into a toilet every weekend. Eight years in, the four actual best friends—Emily Nokes (vocals, tambourine), Eric Randall (guitar), Lelah Maupin (drums), and Bree McKenna (bass)—have fostered a fertile feminist punk scene in Seattle so fertile it’s going national and rendering the notion of the “girl band” even more laughable than it already was. That’s why Tacocat is radical: not because a female-driven band is some baffling novelty, but because they’re a group making art about experiences in which gender is both foregrounded and neutralized. This isn’t lady stuff, it’s people stuff. It’s normal. It’s nothing and everything. It’s life.
Tacocat’s third studio album, Lost Time, is their first with producer Erik Blood (Shabazz Palaces, Moondoggies, THEESatisfaction). Blood brings a wide and expansive technique to the proceedings, adding a fullness to the band’s familiar sparkling snarl. “I would describe him generally as a beautiful wizard,” Nokes says, “who… took the album to the next level. Wizard level.” On Lost Time, Tacocat is triumphantly youthful but also plainspoken and wise, as catchy as they are substantive. “Men Explain Things to Me,” for example, eviscerates male condescension with sarcastic surf guitar, while, on “The Internet,” they swat away trolls with an imperiousness so satisfying that audiences will want to transmogrify it into a sheetcake and devour it. Listening to Tacocat is like attending the best party you’ve ever been to, where, instead of jostling for social position, everyone just wants to eat candy and talk about Sassy Magazine, sci-fi, cultural dynamic shifts, and bad experiences with men.
“[Tacocat] have a lyrical knack for balancing the fun parts of life, like eating Peeps, with its less-rad moments, like getting a urinary tract infection.”
– Rookie
“Only the sarcastic irreverence of Tacocat can lift you out of your vortex of suckitude.”
– Pitchfork
“Tacocat for President.”
– Ben Gibbard
FCC Warning: #2 and #4 (clean versions found on tracks #13 & #14 of this digital servicing)
Recommended Tracks: Track #4, “I Hate the Weekend,” track #8, “Talk,” track #2, “FDP,” track #7, “Plan A, Plan B,” track #1, “Dana Katherine Scully”
RIYL: Chastity Belt, L7, Courtney Love, The Julie Ruin, Shannon and the Clams, La Luz, Hinds, Guantanamo Baywatch, Colleen Green
Going for Adds 3/28 & 3/29
Label: Hardy Art
