5. TEGAN AND SARA
TBA (WARNER BROS.)
WHEN: July
On the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2007's
The Con, members of their touring band join Tegan and Sara Quin,
and Con producer Chris Walla (Death Cab For Cutie) for an album
Sara begrudgingly describes as "upbeat. I hate saying that,
but we just get together in the studio and Tegan and I just dance
awkwardly!" Fans can expect plenty of surprises, including a
track called "Alligator," which Sara based around a
piano hook in a bid for urban pop hit-making. "When it came
to fleshing the arrangement out, nobody reached for a
guitar," she recalls. "Six hours in and there were four
people jamming on keyboards. I was like, 'Oh, my God, are we
Kraftwerk?'" But like many of the Quins' adventures,
there's always a great back story involved. "Tegan and I
did a writing session in New Orleans a couple months ago,"
Sara begins, "We wrote seven songs together and all we had
was an electric guitar, a weird acoustic guitar, a microphone and
a drum kit. And we were like, 'We're gonna make a really
stripped-down Replacements record, just harsh, reverb-y guitars
and focus on melodies and lyrics. Watching everybody playing
keyboards on 'Alligator' made me think, 'You know,
we've really gone off the path here...'"