Tacocat take a risk on their first album for Sub Pop, This Mess is a Place, which finds the Seattle quartet trading their pointed silliness for a more impressionistic investigation of existential wonder and doubt. The hooks are still as irresistibly bright as whatever planet Lisa Frank comes from, but they are no longer delivery systems for cutting commentary and topical humor. You will find no paeans to Dana Katherine Scully or takedowns of bridge-and-tunnel Chads here. Free-floating worry has replaced satirical specificity; outrage has been overwhelmed by melancholy. Nonetheless, the end result is familiar: peerless pop.

by Chris Stamm