Tegan and Sara - Various

★★★★★ Tracks:
My Number
Walking With a Ghost

Soon after college I ended up with a desk job for a large accounting firm. It was a low-level department filled with tons of recent college graduates like myself, making for the most fun and fucked up work environment I will most likely ever be a part of. Endless hours of goofing off in the mail room ensued, and in that mail room we would blare our favorite tunes; anything from Wu-Tang to Garth Brooks on the domestic front and 3 Canal to Ninet Tayeb from the international scene. When management realized shit was getting out of hand, we were dispersed about the office like disciplined first graders in order to settle things down, but that didn’t stop us from using the inter-office instant messaging system to send mp3 files back and forth to one another. It was at this time that one of my closest musical counterparts introduced me to the first Tegan and Sara track I would ever hear. “My Number” has a new wavish, folksy sound hearkening to those singles from the 90’s femme movement (Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, etc). If I make out the lyrics correctly it sounds like Tegan is recounting her issues with identity and sexuality, which makes the song even more interesting knowing what we now know of her.

When I told my friend I had played the shit out of that track, she sent me "Walking With a Ghost" next. In this song, it was obvious the duo had evolved, borrowing heavily from those punk and garage records they must've been collecting over the past few years. Instead of leaning entirely on acoustics and string accompaniments they were blaring electric guitars with distortion while pushing the pitch of their voices to newly grating levels. They began to harness their originality though, and “Walking With a Ghost” became the blueprint for a lot of the group’s later work. Not long afterwards the White Stripes would cover it for an EP. Tegan and Sara are often branded as The Jonas Brothers for the indie teen, and the nod by such a respected rock'n'roll group gave the duo some much needed musical credibility. And as I listen to both tracks back to back a few times over, Jack White’s version can’t touch the original.

Tegan and Sara - The Con

Release Date: 24.7.2007

★★★★★ Tracks:
The Con
Knife Going In
Back in Your Head
Burn Your Life Down

My wife: “Turn that down! Our neighbors are going to think we’re lesbians...”

Me: “Come on, it’s not that bad,” just as Tegan sings, “I felt you in my legs / Before I ever saw you.”

...Alright, she has a point.

Tegan and Sara - Back In Your Head (Live Conan O'Brien 2007)

Tegan and Sara - Sainthood

Release Date: 27.10.2010

★★★★★ Tracks:
Don’t Rush
Hell
Alligator
Paperback Head
The Ocean

Most anyone who enjoys Tegan and Sara will take a defensive stance when speaking of them, a stance that only arises in the case of guilty pleasures. Just look at that album cover ... I understand the criticism to their perceived packaged hipsterism, the gimmicky imagery of are they lesbians / are they twins / are they lovers / maybe all three? But when I play a track all of that never comes to mind because they craft such great pop rock. They remind me of Fleetwood Mac or Tom Petty for modern day indie enthusiasts; taking bits and pieces of all that great rock over the past 25 years and impressively compartmentalizing it. As well as its infectious nature, the duo have incredible talent for building pop songs from the bottom up, as they write all the material themselves.

I’m starting with their latest release because it’s not only their best work yet, but it also garners the lowest “cheese factor” of the bunch. As these twin siblings have grown and matured before our eyes so has their music. Tegan and Sara pull from all of their influences this time around; the album’s named after a Leonard Cohen lyric (“Came So Far For Beauty), “Alligator” sounds like a Madonna throwback, “The Ocean’s” fast tempo and open-stringed strumming brings Jimmy Eat World to mind, on “Hell,” one of the first tracks to have ever been co-written by both sisters, they show how easily power-chord driven punk rock comes to them, and their increasing infatuation with 80’s new wave is harnessed in songs “Don’t Rush,” “The Cure,” “Arrow,” and “Paperback Head.” Chris Walla of Death Cab fame produces T&S for the second time and he markedly improves the recording quality here, everything sounds crisp, with one of the most impressive aspects being the top-notch, forceful drumming and percussion -- the aspect of the music which really carries these songs forward.

Tegan and Sara - Hell

And sure, there is still plenty that could likely be heard backing the credits to a romantic comedy, or some awfully awkward scene to one of those WB shows my wife might or might not watch; in “On Directing,” even Sara herself realizes her sugar-coated lyricism (“Go steady with me / I know it turns you off when I / I get talking like a teen.”) can induce dry heaves. In the end though I just can’t ever seem to let T&S’s immaturity get to me because the hooks are so fucking good. They'll most likely always write with naive and sometimes immature sincerity, and combined with those abrasive tomboyish voices, the unamused will quickly grow disinterested. But 2009’s Sainthood brought Tegan and Sara from oft-played guilty pleasure to a group producing one of my favorite records of 2009.