A Parallel Planets piece by Tomi Uysingco
Parallel Planets
presents Tancred
in Transcending The #EmoRevival™ Hype
Story by Tomi Uysingco
* * *
Last year, if you weren't busy enough
trick or treating or buying Christmas presents (which I wasn't,
sadly) people of the internet saw a resurgence of the word “emo”
on their favorite webzines and publications (see here, here, and
here... and etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam). A lot of people quickly believed
this is a true thing that is actually happening. Like, right now
bro! Then
there are some that dismissed
this as an idea of inept music journalists
that were writing clickbait trend pieces
on whatever scene they
picked
from a hat. Guess
who I am siding with.
Back
in April of 2009, a group was created in Last.fm called Get Rad. It
was a pretty
elitist group,
with the moderator checking what you're listening to before you get
an approved
membership. Being I
was a snot nosed
punk snob, of course I was a
member. Get Rad is where I
discovered bands
and tons
of kids in
bands from a whole bunch
of US towns
like Piscataway and Fenton or
states like Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
We shared a lot of music
amongst ourselves during that time.
Due to
being preoccupied with the
crippling geography of
myself from these bands,
listening to demos and EPs
from share threads, and
scouring Myspace band profiles,
I stumbled across Kids'
Fiction. A duo
from Maine,
the
band only existed for a really short while. They
played twinkly jams
reminiscent to whatever band I was currently into at
the time, with
their song Cambridge being my
go to summer jam for a while. My
old
band was Myspace friends with them (side
note: our recordings
were
terrible). After
a bunch of shows and
releasing
a 4-song EP called Elementary,
Kids' Fiction just wained
from its existence
into better things.
That
was that.
Flash
forward to two weeks ago when my
friends and I saw Lemuria
play a local show. Seeing
them live gave way to a rush of nostalgia spanning years. It
got me listening again to old favorites and playing catch up with the
newer acts that were spawned
during the time that all I did was listen and make electronic music. Right about now is
the time Jess
Abbott aka Tancred came back in to my consciousness.
Everyone
nowadays associates
Jess Abbott with
her quite successful band
Now, Now. Read a write up about her anywhere, they always introduce
her as Jess
Abbott of Now, Now. (Full disclosure: I heavily dig Now, Now. Their
album Threads are filled with rad tunes. I even liked their Facebook
page, so it must be true.) But on my end, I've always associated Jess
with that girl with the
short emo bob haircut that
called
herself a 12-year old boy and played
guitar and sang for Kids' Fiction.
Now
signed to Topshelf Records, home to scene stalwarts The World is a
Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die, we find
Jess Abbott playing
grown woman jams that would be lazily compared to the likes
of Rilo Kiley, Rainer Maria,
Tegan and Sarah, and maybe even Paramore. You know, the usual
suspects of music journos every time they hear a girl make even the
most vaguely indie rock sounding record. What
does indie rock sound like anyway? No one can still answer this
question for me.
Her
new self-titled Tancred
record, released October last
year, sounds wise beyond its years. It
rocks harder compared to her last outing Capes, which was a more
stripped down affair. Cuts like lead single The Ring, Twelve,
Indiana, and Thicker Than Blood showcase her growth as a
songwriter with punchier punk
anthems built for the saddest
sing alongs. Her slower songs
(In the Night, The Worst Kind) all the while are like the lost tapes
of a younger David Bazan. While yes, the Mike
Kinsella like dexterity and noodliness
of her Strings
&
Twine EP and, to an extent,
Kids' Fiction's Elementary EP,
are glaringly absent; its
nothing more but a clear step forward to a
more mature
direction.
Hearing
the lines I complete you in everything you can't do
sang with
so much conviction and
confidence in her song When
You're
Weak is right
about where you'll realize
that, Tancred transcends this whole notion that
an #EmoRevival™
is apparently happening (even
if there is no actual “revival” happening, natch).
Hell, she even transcends her own heartbreaking Stickcam performance
– everyone should listen to her version of Maybe I'm Just Tired by As Tall As Lions, seriously – and those Youtube videos that were
floating on the
web since 2009. She is now
making records that sound like what she would like to make and hear,
and with a lot more years ahead of her, one can't help but be excited
with the prospect of what Tancred
would come up with next.
Her
band Now, Now is writing a new record which everyone should be stoked
about. This also means that you should treasure this latest Tancred
album because it might be a while until the next one, or at least
when the next “revival” is coming back (I hear they're reviving
Industrial this year? Like it
ever went away am I right you guys?).
Revivals only happen twice
every year, folks. Its like a semi-recurring thing for
those genres you haven't heard in four years.
Motherfucking YOLO.
