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Apr 17, 2019 By Stephen Axeman Tacocat

Seattle-based indie punk quartet Tacocat have shared a video for the new song “The Joke of Life,” the latest single off of their upcoming Sub Pop debut This Mess Is a Place, and we are pleased to premiere it. The video is a touching homage to friendship composed of home shot footage of the group messing around from over the years. The track itself is an ode to the absurdity of forging meaning and the bittersweet quest for stability anchored by a rockabilly surf lick and replete with doo-wop style backing vocals. Check out the video, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates, below. This Mess Is a Place is due out May 3.

On the making of the video lead singer Emily Nokes had this to say: “I love how this song turned out. The backing vocal harmonies especially. And the music is so fun! Those drums! This is also one of my favorite concepts on the album - the joke is that the joke is already a joke. You know when something is so unbelievable, in a bad way, that it can’t even be satirized because irony falls short of the real thing? Like we’ve entered a twilight zone of perpetual horror and now we’re just… adapting to it. Because what else are you going to do?”

This Mess Is a Place marks Tacocat’s debut for Sub Pop, following their 2016 album Lost Time which came out on Hardly Art, an independent subsidiary of Sub Pop. A previous press release said the album “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.”

Previously they shared a video for its first single “Grains of Salt.” Then they shared another song from it, album opener “Hologram.”

Tacocat 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

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