Date: Wednesday February 11, 2004 @ 02:00 PM Author: Trevor Hargreaves Publication: ChartAttack.com Headline: Tegan & Sara: Their Weird World Of Real Estate And Scooby Doo

Canada’s favourite fast-talking, mop-topped acoustic twins are about to begin work on a new album. Tegan & Sara are currently split across the country but regroup in a few weeks to hit the studio. In the meantime, one half of the dynamic duo (the illustrious Sara Quin) was kind enough to inform ChartAttack what the girls have been up to recently and how the new songs are coming along. Will the production tasks of your new album be handled yet again by the JC/DC recording team? [John Collins of New Pornographers and Dave Carswell of The Evaporators] Sara: JC/DC are back and so is Tegan and Sara. The new material is hilarious. Tegan is a pop machine, and I’m writing a lot of weird short songs that incite responses like, "Sara, why don’t you ever write lyrics, in fact, what the hell are these exactly?" Tegan and I are recording at home like crazy. We’re trying to produce and be as involved as possible. I call John and Dave at 6 p.m. every day and sing any ideas I have. They love it. Tegan and I are becoming scarily fantastic at Pro tools. Even my Grandpa liked our demos this year at Christmas. How has the writing process been structured for the new album? Has it come along easily? This record has been easier to write than the others. Tegan and I both record at home now. And we are getting more confident and comfortable with all the skills involved. We are also hoarding instruments and playing a lot of tambo. Have you got a lot of new material? We are sitting on about 30 new songs right now. Tegan has them all separated into the A-list and the B-list. It’s very intense with Tegan. Kind of like Outkast. Is there any stylistic change from the last album? It’s hard to say. We just hear what comes out and have no space from ourselves for perspective. Others say that we are growing and sounding particularly comfortable with the sounds and songs we are making. I think this record is going to be a bit more relaxed. Since you are geographically separated, has there been much time to jam the songs together? I’m not sure Tegan and I ever jam. Although I do have to be back in Vancouver February 1 for "rehearsal time." I’ve never been one for rehearsing. So it should be interesting. In Grade 11, my mom was at my piano recital and I won the "Most Improved Student Of The Year" award, and I will always remember her saying loudly as I walked up to collect my trophy, "imagine how good she’d be if she ever PRACTICED!" That was embarrassing. I was wearing a dress too! You toured recently with Matt Sharp [ex-Weezer] and he had gear stolen after a show in Montreal. How did this happen? Was he a cool guy? Were you able to convince him to rejoin Weezer so that they will be funny again? He played with you as well, how was that? Matt was awesome. He isn’t joining Weezer again any time soon, mostly because he is a Tegara-head now. His stuff got stolen on the way out of the club. There was some confusion. It could have been the drinking. Then he got locked in the club in the morning when he went back to look for it. And while he was setting off the alarm and getting rescued by the janitor, his RV got broken into. He really loved Montreal, but I think he was happy to leave. Poor Matt. We love him. You have a funny fake link to your website advertising the Tegan and Sara Real-Estate Company. Who was responsible for that? Tegan lies, I make pottery. That’s how we "relax." Have you contributed songs to any movie soundtracks recently? No, but our song "Time Running" was in a recent Scooby Doo cartoon. Anything else that you want to tell ChartAttack readers? I don’t think I have anything interesting to report. I saw Tegan at Christmas and we hugged once. Her hair looks a lot like mine. She has been loosening up. I saw Naomi Klein speak in Montreal last month and it was amazing. I received 10 books for Christmas. My mom really supports me vacationing. I fell on ice in Montreal recently and thought I had broken my bum. OK, that’s it.