Tacocat's Emily Nokes on This Mess is a Place

In the wake of the 2016 Presidential elections, the political landscape of the United States found itself in foreign waters; for many, a sense of what was to follow was laced in a malady of fear. For Seattle-bred riot grrrl four-piece Tacocat, this fear birthed their fourth full-length record (and first on Sub Pop) This Mess Is a Place.

Through their effortlessly charming humour and lyrical conundrums that seek to challenge and change perspectives, Tacocat have delivered a record that subverts. It turns fear into happiness, hate into love and is instilled religiously with a sense that they're a band who care. "I think metaphors and satire, and just a hint of humour, is sort of how we’ve always approached our brand of politics," explains vocalist Emily Nokes of the band’s approach to expressing their socio-political criticisms. "There is a lot to say, and it can be said in so many different ways. But anger doesn’t register well with me; I think for a long time people were just fighting anger with anger and that wasn’t really going to do anything. But fighting with satire just feels like a different kind of upper hand. And it just makes people think a little harder or change perspectives."

This shifting political landscape did lead the band to some changes, though. While lyrically the band retain the witty Tacocat bite, their soundscape has grown, encapsulating a greater sense of joy. "There was this sort of cheesy thing happening after the election where people were like 'Oh well that’s okay. The best musicians in history have made their best music when they’ve been struck by politics,'" says Nokes. "But I felt like this was some sort of masculine expectation. So I think that we were informed by the opposite. We decided this record is going to sound fucking happy and triumphant – we wanted it to sound good despite things being politically crass. We didn’t want to write a bunch of sad sounding lyrics, but even if we did, the musical element on the album is just soaring, and that much bigger."

The record shouldn’t just be taken as no more than politically concerned at its face-value, while the stories told seem much less personally introspective than perhaps the outlook found in 2014’s NVM. For a band so politically concerned, and writing at the height of dire change, it's unsurprising that they find their personal stories so naturally intertwined with the broader scale of national politics. "This is the first album we made post-election, so it was like, God, everything feels bad – the world feels bad, but I feel bad. Both personally, and as a larger zooming out scope. It was very hard to separate [the personal and the political], it’s just part of how you’re alive right now. It wasn’t like, 'Oh, these are personal love songs'. This is what we are thinking about – it just weaves together."

The most interesting aspect of Tacocat is their sense of community, both within the band and within the wider society they’ve grown in. Friendship thrives through the band, as Nokes explains: "Being really tight friends for our band makes the collaboration a lot better." With all four being close friends even before forming Tacocat, this comes as no surprise. Their creative process runs smoother, enabling their music to breathe honesty; for a group of individuals, they still achieve one all-encompassing voice, which many bands are clear to fall short of. Beyond internal friendship though, is their embodiment and warm embrace of the Seattle community. As naturally as the band intertwine the personal and political, they too personify the environment that shapes them. "The environment will always inform the music," says Nokes, "by the way of osmosis, through the things that we care about and the place we live.

"The Seattle community is amazing," she continues. "When we first started out it wasn’t so much. It was quite exclusively for certain kinds of dude bands and it wasn’t as accepting of female musicians. But now, it’s very inclusive with queer folk and marginalised identities. And we all like to collaborate." Collaboration is rife through the record. In discussing the conceptualisation of the video for Grains of Salt – the enigmatic first single from This Mess Is a Place – Nokes enthuses, "We’ve had drag performers open for us and stuff like that, but we don’t get a chance to collaborate as much because theirs is such a highly specific art form, so I felt it was fun for the video to take some of the artists we admire and allow them to become the main focus of the video."

Continuing this discussion on art, Nokes paints a path back to Tacocat’s punk roots. "I always loved the whole idea of all of riot grrrl, which includes visual art [as well as music]," she explains. "There’s also this person in Seattle who makes this zine called Free Witch, and it’s just this art of doing whatever the fuck you want – baking yourself a cake and throwing yourself a birthday party, or taking your clothes off and taking photos. Just everybody doing whatever they want and not feeling guilty for it. It reminds me of that riot grrrl moment of being loud and in your face. I love that literal representation of 'Anything I do is art because I say it's art'. I really admire that freeform situation. I really just love people doing their own thing, and being themselves."

In discussing the playfully vibrant, wondrously abstract lyricism in Grains of Salt ('That’s just grains of salt / That’s just tears in the oven'), Nokes explains her approach to songwriting with candid profundity. "For this song more than any other one, I didn’t want it to sound too polemic or literal, because that’s what our songwriting used to sound like. So, for this record I just had this big notebook of things, like a calendar, where I’d just been jotting things down all the time, like sentences I’d heard, or conversations I’d had with people, or just random thoughts. And I just started picking things out and stitching them together." It becomes apparent that the concept of art as freeform resides in Nokes’ approach to songwriting, which she ultimately describes as "a long process of picking out notes without making things sound too literal."

The band remain equally as politically-driven in their plans for future projects. While beyond the repetitive cycle of touring and promotions that fall in hand with a new record, Nokes retains this hopeful buoyancy as she expresses the band’s future with the same notion of hope for change, and a better world that gushes through the record. "With the next set of elections starting to ramp up again, it feels good to get out there. We want people at our shows to get registered to vote and we want to get words out. I’m sure the closer we get to the next election we will get more scope to lend a hand, as a band that has a certain kind of platform. We want to be motivating people to be doing the right thing."

This Mess Is a Place proves the legacy of the riot grrrl movement, as it embodies Tacocat’s fearless 'Fuck It' attitude, intertwined with poetic socio-political critique of freeform inspiration, alongside their congenial love for friendship, community and happiness. For Nokes, especially, there lies an intention for the record to instil positivity in whoever it finds. "I’d like people to take away a sense of strength and perseverance, the idea of just keeping on. Anger is valid, and sadness is very valid too, but I wanted the album to just feel like you’re allowed to still find happiness and look after yourself while you’re fighting for things that you hold dear."

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This Mess Is a Place is released on 3 May via Sub Pop

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