Stream Tacocat’s New Album This Mess Is A Place

Stream Tacocat’s New Album This Mess Is A Place

Seattle punks Tacocat have been around for a solid decade now, and they’ve been steadily sharpening their big, fuzzed-out hooks for that entire time. Next week, the band will release the new album This Mess Is A Place, the band’s fourth LP and the follow-up to 2016’s Lost Time. It’s the band’s first album for Sub Pop, the band’s hometown indie-label giant. And one of the best things about the new album is that it sounds like something that could’ve come out at any point in the label’s history.

To be fair, during the early-’90s grunge wave, Sub Pop might not have known what to do with Tacocat’s tingly harmonies and surging melodies. Back then, maybe the band would’ve been more at home on Merge or Teenbeat or Simple Machines — labels known for loud and propulsive and fun power-pop. But Tacocat’s newest album still sounds proudly out-of-time, a monument to what happens when you combine slapped-together DIY enthusiasm with honest-to-god pop-music songcraft.

Compared to past Tacocat albums, This Mess Is A Place is a little more serious, more bent on capturing the restlessness and all-pervading disgust of life in the Trump era. But the band still brings a real sense of joy and confidence to their fired-up, synth-laced pop-punk. We’ve already posted the early tracks “Grains Of Salt,” “Hologram,” and “The Joke Of Life.” And right now, you NPR has the whole album streaming. Take half an hour and listen to it here.

This Mess Is A Place is out 5/3 on Sub Pop.

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