Tegan & Sara
Sainthood 3.5
Sire
Fixed in the mind as the perpetual late teens that burst onto the
scene a decade ago with their debut album Under Feet Like Ours,
it's somewhat sobering to realise that Tegan & Sara are less than a
year away from their thirtieth birthdays, and that the release of
Sainthood puts the Canadian twins on album number six already. Their
rise to prominence has been steady and credible, each release and tour
adding to their passionate fanbase, and aided by the muscle of major
label Sire since 2007's The Con, this album finds them poised
on the brink of bastion status among the North American alternative
scene. As festival and TV mainstays, loved for their striking visual
presence and genuinely offbeat sense of humour, they are approaching
ubiquity without ever seeming to get any older.
But while the Quin genes are gifted with these age-defying properties,
their music has been undergoing something of a maturation over the
past few years. If you trace a line from their tentative emergence as
a principally acoustic pairing offering a heartfelt teenage take on
Ani DiFranco-style angst to their latest incarnation as electronic
power-popsters standing somewhere in a spidery lineage presided over
by Cyndi Lauper, in many ways it's as if you were listening to another
band entirely. Then again, there is much that has stayed the same.
Take the ripped, broken-heart emotion, the everyday imagery of
backyards and non-returned phonecalls, the sense of Tegan & Sara being
emotional every-people, relating the joys and anguish of love as it is
for girls, boys and everyone else – all this remains among the beeps
and bloops and the expanding production budget. And perhaps most
importantly, so does their knack for turning out a killer chorus.
As with The Con, Death Cab For Cutie's Chris Walla takes the
production reins for a tidy-as-you-like exercise in polished
restraint, never once burying the duo beneath a pile of overly
considered gloss. And while much of the album sounds like a
progression, the lyrical trickery of tracks like 'Red Belt' are
classic, any-era Tegan & Sara. Opening track 'Arrow', on the other
hand, is definitely of the now with its choppy electronics and
staccato introduction, a bleeping curveball directed straight at the
established fan's tender undercarriage. The sensations it creates are
not displeasing though, and by the second chorus everything starts to
make sense. 'Don't Rush' continues the disorientation, with a glorious
rock-disco choral flounce that unashamedly hooks you and then proceeds
to shake you for dear life. The throbbing bassline, slash-heavy guitar
and relentless drum groove sounds more like a car crash between The
Bee Gees and a broken down '80s hair metal band than the effusions of
the tender acoustic songwriters of earlier years. Oddly, it all works,
and by the time first single 'Hell' hurtles its solitary way through a
night-time cityscape like Avril Lavigne on steroids, you may well be
breathless and wondering what happened.
Things do start to mellow, though, and the creeping emotional maturity
cognisant with their ages starts to show itself too. 'The Cure' could
slide easily onto the tracklisting of their previous outing, with a
more world-accepting voice offering the comfort of the “bad fixing
itself” and the solace of time, a perspective only rarely found in
someone much younger. As on 'Hell', the gear shifts up a trio during
'Northshore' with an incessant pop-punk riff and shouted entreaties
not to engage with an angry head. Even adults have their adolescent
moments. Perhaps they shouldn't have let off all that steam because
parts of the album are left a little wanting. The polished,
piano-driven '80s pop of 'Alligator' seems too studious for
independent life, the vocals buried beneath too much tinkling and
chord uplift. 'Paperback Head' and 'Night Watch' similarly make the
album's middle a little less than enthralling. Then again, even the
most hardcore Tegan & Sara fan has to admit that there has always been
a hit or miss quality about much of their output. Their misses,
though, are not disasters; they merely hold back the very good from
becoming truly great.
Still, rough edges can do wonders for your charm and Tegan & Sara have
always had that in spades. It's poured into the closing track
'Someday', a Fiery Furnaces meets 'Sesame Street' number with too many
words for its tune, an intermittent school cheer and a brush the dust
off your sneakers and look to the future lyric that sticks a chin in
the air and walks proudly on despite the pain. The Quin twins have
always been way too active to slip into stultified emotional
passivity, and it's partly this energy that has always pushed them to
write apart. Despite an attempt at working together as songwriters for
Sainthood, most of what's included is once again the product of
their separate solitary craft, an approach that's sufficiently
unbroken to really require a fix. Together yet apart, there's a whole
lot of dichotomies contained in this whole. And here's another in
conclusion: the small section of their fanbase that was starting to
lose patience with them after The Con may well throw in the
towel with Sainthood, but loyal devotees and newcomers will
love the playfulness and diversity contained within. Tegan & Sara may
never be candidates for musical beatification but they're still pretty
righteous.