I’m super excited to finally be able to catch the one and only Tacocat on Thursday, May 9th at The 7th Street Entry for their tour kickoff show!
When Seattle band Tacocat—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. It was a world of house shows, booking DIY tours on MySpace, and writing funny, deliriously catchy feminist pop-punk songs when feminism was the quickest way to alienate yourself from the then-en vogue garage-rock bros.
Their lyrical honesty, humor, and hit-making sensibilities have built the band a fiercely devoted fanbase over the years, one that has followed them from basements to dive bars to sold-out shows at the Showbox. 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 center, with new tragedies and civil rights assaults filling up the scroll of the newsfeed every day. “What a time to be barely alive,” laments “Crystal Ball,” a gem that examines the more intimate side of responding emotionally to the news cycle. How do you keep fighting when all you want to do is stay in bed all day? “Stupid computer stupor/Oh my kingdom for some better ads,” Nokes sings, throwing in some classic Tacocat snark, “Truth spread so thin/It stops existing.”
Sammi Lanzetta will be opening up for Tacocat. As a new voice in the crowded world of indie rock, Richmond, Virginia’s Sammi Lanzetta is poised to stand out with her debut EP, For Avery (2017). The EP’s brisk ten minutes waste no time in introducing her charming collision of raw instrumentation, nervous energy, and confident melodies, marked by the 21-year-old’s ability to communicate a broad range of personality and humanity into concisely catchy tunes. Lanzetta’s dynamic voice, perhaps her greatest tool, darts between soulful, vulnerable, and commanding with ease, perfectly complimenting a conversational lyricism that can often go from angry, to humorous, to heartbreaking, all in the space of a single song.
Tickets are still available HERE!
Tour Dates:
May 09 – St. Paul, MN – Turf Club
May 10 – Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club
May 11 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
May 12 – Grand Rapids, MI – The Pyramid Scheme
May 13 – Pittsburgh, PA – Club Cafe
May 15 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair
May 17 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
May 18 – Philadelphia, PA – Boot & Saddle
May 19 – Washington, D.C. – U Street Music Hall
May 21 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook
May 22 – Atlanta, GA – The Drunken Unicorn
May 23 – Nashville, TN – The High Watt
May 24 – St. Louis, MO – Off Broadway
May 25 – Kansas City, MO – The Record Bar
Jun. 08 – Seattle, WA – The Showbox at the Market
Jun. 12 – Spokane, WA – The Bartlett
Jun. 13 – Boise, ID – Neurolux
Jun. 14 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
Jun. 15 – Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge
Jun. 17 – Dallas, TX – Club Dada
Jun. 18 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
Jun. 19 – Austin, TX – Barracuda
Jun. 21 – Sante Fe, NM – Meow Wolf
Jun. 22 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar
Jun. 23 – San Diego, CA – The Casbah
Jun. 25 – Los Angeles, CA – The Bootleg Theater
Jun. 26 – San Francisco, CA – The Chapel
Jun. 28 – Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater
