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Tancred: Transcending The #EmoRevival™ Hype

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.

 
More from Tancred
tancredmusic.tumblr.com
facebook.com/tancredmusic
tancred.bandcamp.com


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