Album: Lost Time - Tacocat

Words: Emma May

I had enough with the never-ending rain and parasitic infestation of cookie cutter condominiums; I was itching to leave Seattle forever. High school was terrible, and I felt like I could never comfortably fit in. I found solace in art, music and fashion, and was particularly inspired by feminist punk. I was angry, and it put into words what I could not express myself.

When I was in high school, I was invited to join the school’s male-dominated contemporary music club because I was “a feminist who liked Gucci Mane.” As the token angry feminist, I was asked to provide a novel perspective to the group. The first day that I attended a meeting, we had a special guest lead a discussion with us. 

We began the meeting by going around in a circle and sharing what music we were listening to. I said that I just finished Sara Marcus’ Girls to the Front. From the corner of the room, I heard an enthusiastic “yeah!” It was Emily Nokes from the band Tacocat. My face flushed. “Holy shit,” I thought. Tacocat was one of my favorite bands, and I was an avid reader of Nokes’ work in Seattle’s alt-weekly The Stranger. Unbeknownst to me, she had been sitting across the room. “Thanks” I muttered in disbelief. 

Photo: Michael Lavine

On April 1st, Tacocat  will release Lost Time off Hardly Art. Its songs are upbeat, humorous and incredibly catchy. A standout is the addictive “I Hate the Weekend,” alluding to the boisterous but bland bros who takeover the bars in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, “paint[ing] the rainbow shades of beige, tak[ing] down everything we made.” Layered over crisp pop-punk chords, Nokes croons “they run into our streets, homogenized and oh so bleak.” In the track, Tacocat tackles the enraging bro-ification of Seattle with wit and sparkling melodies.

My favorite song off of the album is "Leisure Bees". It’s about just letting go and enjoying yourself. Over soothingly sweet doo-wops, Nokes suggests, “take your time / because it is your time to take / and the values that you want / are the ones that you create.” When I first started listening to Tacocat, I was enraged by many injustices of the world around me. Tacocat’s comical perspectives on feminism and overall upbeat flair helped me to conceptualize issues of sexism, while clearing the fog of teenage angst that had warped my world. Through their music, I learned that I had the power within myself to change my environment, and that I had it within myself to be happy. This happiness, especially for a self-proclaimed misfit teenager, was extremely hard to find. Yet it was there nonetheless, I needed to cultivate it myself. 

Listening to Lost Time makes me surprisingly nostalgic for my time growing up in Seattle. I realize it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. I miss blasting pop punk in my best friend’s beat up Ford Explorer while zooming down Harbor Avenue during golden hour, the squishy mud between my toes at Green Lake during wine-fueled late night swimming sessions, and the fragrant and fresh produce lining the open air markets on Jackson. Despite our city’s rapid changes, “earthquake, tsunami, there’s still no place I’d rather be.”