I always enjoy finding an exceptional new band or album, and my most recent discovery is Lost Time by Tacocat. Let us pause a moment to spell Tacocat backwards.

T-a-c-o-c-a-t.

If that’s not enough reason to like them, there’s also the music. Labelling themselves post post punk pop pop, classified by many as punk or pop punk, Tacocat delivers ice-cream-with-bubble-gum-sweet hard-edged pop in a bowl of witty lyrics and feminism (from a fun viewpoint). They are the Go-Go’s’ slightly naughty younger sister.

The Northwest has been a hotbed for feminist bands since the 90s. Olympia was the cradle of the riot grrrl explosion (hard-hitting punk with feminist lyrics), which featured bands like Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile. The current crop of feminist bands (Chastity Belt, NighTraiN, La Luz, Mommy Long Legs and G.L.O.S.S. among others) don’t all play the same style of music, but their lyrical content and philosophical bent join them together in a musical movement that is poised to be the next big thing in our corner of the continent.

Tacocat, the most popular of our NW feminist bands, came to some prominence in 2014 with the release of NVM, which includes Crimson Wave, a pop-surf song about menstruation.

Call my girls, see if they wanna go, take their minds off dumb aunt Flo
Sew a scarlet letter on my bathing suit, ‘cause I’ve got sharks in hot pursuit
Surfin’, surfin’ the wave

The album, whose title is a nod to Nirvana’s Nevermind, was critically acclaimed, even being named one of the top 10 CMJ college radio albums of 2014. Lost Time has not been as well-received but it’s still a highly enjoyable listening experience. The album’s title is an X-Files reference and the first song, Dana Katherine Scully, is a paean to Fox Mulder’s partner, a woman trying to get ahead in that men’s club known as the FBI: “… she’s the only one thinking it through …”.

Topics that the band tackles on Lost Time include menstruation, women having sex and men belittling women. FDP, the album’s second song, features lead singer Emily Nokes’ feelings on the first day of her period: “So tired, so spent / Functioning at ten percent”. A pregnancy scare is looked at in Plan A, Plan B when a woman considers using the morning-after pill as a contraceptive following a condom failure: “Had safe sex / Faulty latex”. Men Explain Things To Me is a woman’s response to mansplaining: “We get it dude / We’ve already heard enough from you / The turning point is overdue”.

But not everything is feminism. I Love Seattle takes a look at the earthquake that will destroy the Northwest coast and the lack of concern that accompanies it:

Ooooh, beautiful Seattle
Ah, fall into the sea
Earthquake, tsunami
There’s still no place I’d rather be

And other songs are simply about day to day life, its joys and pitfalls. Night Swimming contains an obscurely funny lyric: “You can bring a boom box / But you can’t play R.E.M.”. I enjoy this line simply because I don’t care for R.E.M.’s music. But dig even deeper and you’ll find that R.E.M. also has a song called Nightswimming. Excellent arcane reference.

Be sure to check out Lost Time, and if you want to look further into feminist music from the Northwest, try Sleater-Kinney, Childbirth and THEESatisfaction.