Tancred, aka New England resident Jess Abbott, released their third, and finest album to date, earlier this year and will shortly be heading over to this side of the Atlantic to promote it. To whet appetites ahead of that tour check out these videoclips, Tancred have this week shared a new video to new single, Pens. The video is an homage to horror movies, featuring the seemingly omnipresent Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz; discussing the idea behind the video Jess notes, “I wanted evil to seem really seductive and just take me with it. But evil is still evil no matter how sexy it is so I still needed to die at the end.”
Putting aside the video, Pens is primarily just a rollickingly good pop song. It opens with a muted strum of electric guitar, Jess’ vocal sways into earshot as rolling toms beat a primal rhythm behind her. Like so many songwriters at the moment, Jess’ music transports the listener back to the alt-rock world of the late 1990’s, but Jess injects it with enough fresh melodic hits and lyrical ideas to lift it way above a pastiche. Jess has suggested that the album Out Of The Garden is a record about, “doing what you want, what you need, without letting anything or anyone stop you – and smiling while you do it.” Fine advice, and if everyone else sounds this good following it, then all the better.
Out Of The Garden is out now via Polyvinyl Records. Tancred tours the UK in November,
The Fat Angel Sings 