by David Wilikofsky
Queercore as a genre has always been near and dear to my heart. As a gay kid growing up in the Bible belt of Pennsylvania, there wasn’t any queer culture to speak of. I still remember stumbling on Captain, My Captain in the bargain bin at Borders and taking a chance on it because it was released on Chainsaw Records, the same label as Sleater-Kinney’s Call the Doctor (another favorite). As soon as I played it I was instantly hooked; it was one of the first candid depictions of gay life I’d ever heard, and it’s pretty hard to understate the importance this album had in my adolescent life. While I only discovered Once Upon A Time Called Now in the last few weeks, I imagine my teenage self would have loved it.
Longstocking was formed in 1995 in Los Angeles by guitarist and lead singer Tamara Poljak. Poljak has formerly been a member of the groups Oiler and Fleabag. The band was initially a guitar and drum duo, but soon expanded to a four piece. The group’s sole album, Once Upon A Time Called Now, was released on Donna Dresch’s Chainsaw Records in 1997. By the time the album hit shelves the group had already disbanded; Poljak left Los Angeles and moved to Olympia, Washington, effectively ending the group.
Most of what I’ve read about the group compares them to other queercore bands of the era, but listening to the album I’m not sure if I completely agree. On the surface it makes sense. It’s a group mostly comprised of queer women who make punk rock and released their album on one of the seminal labels of that scene. However, when I think about queercore I immediately think of groups like Team Dresch (a group that Poljak actually joined post-Longstocking). Their queer identity felt central to nearly every song they wrote, but there’s much less of that in Poljak’s lyrics. That’s not to say that the group doesn’t address their identity at all (tracks like “Goddess Part 2” deal directly with same sex attraction) but it doesn’t feel as close to the mission of the band as other practitioners of that genre.
What I’m really getting from this album is 90’s alt rock greatness, a mishmash of sounds from some of my all time favorite artists. Perhaps the most apt comparison would be to labelmates Sleater-Kinney, another group adjacent to that scene. Although there’s more of a pop sheen to Longstocking’s approach, there are still undeniable sonic similarities between the two. The overlapping vocals on “Autobarb” or “Radio Agony” recall the interplay between Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker (there’s even a dead ringer for Tucker’s signature yelp on the former), and both groups’ guitar playing shares an angular ferocity. I also hear nods to other female greats of the era such as Liz Phair. “Goddess Part 2” sounds like an upbeat interpolation of Phair’s “Flower”, although Longstocking sound sweet and innocent when compared to Phair’s notoriously dirty lyrics. Perhaps most importantly, the group’s pop instincts shine throughout; nothing here is anything less than an earworm.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter what you label it. This album fucking rules. The good news is that although the record appears to have been long out of print, in researching for this piece I discovered it’s being re-released by Jealous Butcher Records in time for next month’s Bandcamp Day. It’s the perfect time to cop this long lost classic.