Tegan + Sara -- s/d

but they have really shitty attitudes

Where does this come from? They didn't seem *that* annoying on the So Jealous documentary.

I LIKE HOW ALL THEIR SONGS ARE ABOUT WHAT FUCKUPS THEY ARE W GIRLS

the last album (the con) is like fucking aural crack, it's all I've probably listened to it 100 times in the past month (it helps that it's really short and I've been working around the clock). I'm sure it's have a really horrible effect on me, it remains to be seen what that will be.

wow that sentence was incomprehensible. sorry i've had 3 hours of sleep in two days

For about two weeks when Walking With A Ghost came out, I thought that it was Ween making fun of someone I couldn't identify.

4 T&S threads but this one mentions 'The Con', which I quite like

ONLY this one

i listen to that album all the time. someone else somewhere on ILX said they listen to them way more than is healthy and I am probably in this same demographic. I certainly think of that quote every time I listen to them (which, lately, is every time I'm in the car).

I picked up "If It Was You" a couple years ago (from the dollar bin), and it kind of sat there for a long time. Recently I got stuck in a CD-only situation for quite awhile, and now I'm addicted to this CD.

I still want them to go back and de-compress "So Jealous" thereby undoing the only flaw in an otherwise amazing album.

Anyway...new album "Sainthood" is out, and man they're getting awfully consistantly good, to the point where it's easy to overlook them. My favorite thing at the moment is "The Cure" which makes me think that someone's been listening to "Oh Your City Lies In Dust." Pretty amazing production on this one as well...sometimes I'd swear that Eno (like AGW Eno) was behind some of the textures.

love the new one, yeah

... even if they're just Dancing in the Dark

this is great! they are a great band. there's almost a pretenders or, uh, pat benatar feel to some of them (good thing).

i don't have the album in front of me; the ones that really impress me are the slow-burn, low-slung repetitive ones. the pop-punk songs i like a lot less.

the song they are playing a lot on the current is pretty dope

i'm with you guys - it didn't grab me immediately, but on second and third listen i think it's a terrific batch of tunes. they don't sound anything like sleater-kinney, of course, but sometimes some of the vocals put me in the mind of The Girl Banned

i think the new single is terrific and lol the production/instrumentation reminds me of perfume

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7MNGPmrlW0

Newer new track "I Was a Fool" would feel at home on a Fleetwood Mac album with different production and Stevie and/or Christine singing. http://soundcloud.com/teganandsara/i-was-a-fool/s-h5FKe

It's great! Copying my comment on the Pop thread:

Never cared much for Tegan and Sara, but The Line Of Best Fit's plug of the new single, deeming it "an epic Taylor Swift covering Kate Bush pop ballad", worked like a charm for me (even if I don't agree with the KB-part of that statement). Lovely song:

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/new-music/blog/listen-tegan-and-sara-i-was-a-fool-116066

The sound reminds me of the Young Galaxy production from Lissvik (who are also coming with a new albums soon!)

another new one: http://stereogum.com/1237151/tegan-sara-now-im-all-messed-up-stereogum-premiere/mp3s/

devastating imo

ruining the song i posted tbh

Loving this Heartthrob album to bits.

album of the year so far (i know) (but)

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/tegan-and-sara-continue-pop-evolution-on-heartthrob-album-premiere-20130124

Starts strong with the first two, ends strong with the last two. Stop Desire is the tentpole in the middle.

I may eventually like the other five songs, but right now I'm not sure I do.

very little stands out either for good or bad which i suppose ends up being a negative. it feels so tightly focused that there's not much exciting about it unfortunately

i love "white knuckles" and "dying to know"

it is basically heartthrob all over again but i'm sort of into how it doubles down on the aesthetic, even if the songs are potentially less immediate this time

wait "stop desire" just hit me, holy shit

New album's cover art is very reminiscent of David Bowie though he always had a mouth in photos, I think. I haven't seen many reviews that mention T&S along with him (I have seen a very few random references, often mullet-related) as far as their ability to flourish while working under all sorts of stylistic circumstances, as well as career path from acoustic troubadour to mainstream success. I actually like this one more than Heartthrob.

Really like this album. Surprised to see people have been saying it's a slight disappointment. There's nothing as amazing as Closer but it doesn't seem like a drop off to me.

Nothing's grabbed me yet. I'm sure like Heartthrob it'll grow on me, but I think it's funny that their pop albums are less immediate than the records they used to make

At the end of the day I liked them better from If It Was You through Sainthood, but the Lex's of the world have declared that Heartthrob is the way of the future, and I'm not one to stand in the way of that.

"U-Turn" is the instant standout for me. A couple others ("Stop Desire," "BWU") sound like songs I might soon come to like a lot, but I'm still waiting for the album as a whole to click with me.

the Lex's of the world have declared that Heartthrob is the way of the future

lol he doesn't even like that album iirc

That is lol.

But thanks for letting me know about what goes on in threads about the band that I've been pushing on ILM for the last 12 years...

you have never not been yourself

It is kind of interesting that their whole take-off here starts with a SFJ review, which was pretty much the first time that I recall a mainstream critic not sneering at them. I haven't read everything, so there may have been exceptions. They were artistically mature by 2002 at the very least.

I think I first got into them for the simple reason that they were originally signed to Neil Young's label, and I took it as an endorsement of sorts. So I'd kept following them over the years, with varying degrees of interest, but it was with the full shift into insane greatness with Heartthrob that I really fell for them myself.

LYTD reminds me in some ways of the second Bloc Party album. All the elements of the magical thing that was the prior album are still present, but the core seems hollow somehow? I dunno. But I can't remember the last time I listened to the second BP album.

Is their drummer until recently, Adam Christgau, Robert's son, or is that a bizarre last name coincidence?

Christgau has a daughter, nos ongs.

sons

This is quickly growing on me. Still feels like the songwriting is less sharp than usual, and there's parts that seem unusually tacky, and it's not nearly the big leap forward each of their records had been until this point. But it's catchy and effervescent and feels good to listen to. Good summer listening if nothing else.

Laura Snapes' review of that Con covers album from the other month is such a great read. Necessary corrective to some of the downright hateful coverage this band used to receive; I'd forgotten how badly the music press used to beat up these two.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tegan-and-sara-the-con-x-covers/

This is one of my favorite albums ever and somehow I love it even more than I did 10 years ago.

What era of the band did they receive their harshest criticism in, though? Like, I don't know if their pre-So Jealous work circulated much outside of Canada, but I remember thinking when they first came out with This Business of Art that this is what Ani DiFranco must sound like to people who hate Ani DiFranco.

Probably the So Jealous era, just when they were big enough to get some mainstream recognition, but when music coverage was still unabashedly misogynistic. There's some threads about them on ilx that are pretty bad, and Pitchfork's early coverage of them was very patronizing.

Right. One thing I had forgotten until just now was that, circa 2005, we were still in the kind of environment where, when Jack White covered "Walking With a Ghost," there were actually people who were like "ok, NOW its okay to like this."

From the Pitchfork So Jealous review :|

There's really no reason why these identical twins shouldn't be huge. Their songs fuse Ashlee Simpson mall-punk with the retro 80s fetish of former tourmate Ryan Adams' recent high-profile stinker.

Still, I can't spare So Jealous the critical scalpel just because it's inexplicably below the mainstream radar. Co-producers John Collins (New Pornographers) and David Carswell (Smugglers) are no excuse, either. Collins and Carswell helped turn Tegan and Sara's early Lilith Fair folk into Alanis Morissette-style pop/rock on 2002's If It Was You...

Band wrote about it in this Instagram post, which is heartbreaking:

These reviews barely scratch the surface of the sexism and homophobia that were in every review, article and comment about our band for the first ten years of our career. The less reputable press and websites were much harsher and I can still tap into the shame and anger that was on constant feedback loop in my body during those years. Our band and managers and record label would say "don't read it" or "Fuck them!" or "don't say anything it will just make it worse" and maybe most frustrating of all "besides those parts it's actually a positive review". Everyone fumbled through that era trying to support us but it was profoundly isolating. What I grieve the most is the lost opportunity to learn from a balanced critique. I had to shut off and stopped reading or absorbing anything anyone said about us during that album cycle. It took another ten years to undue my deepest fears and insecurities that we were the awful things people said about us. I'm so glad its different now.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW0p-WWlq6J/?hl=en&taken-by=teganandsara

new album is out in september - Hey, I'm Just Like You - with first single "I'll Be Back Someday" out v soon.

1. Hold My Breath Until I Die
2. Hey, I'm Just Like You
3. I'll Be Back Someday
4. Don't Believe the Things They Tell You (They Lie)
5. Hello, I'm Right Here
6. I Don't Owe You Anything
7. I Know I'm Not the Only One
8. Please Help Me
9. Keep Them Close 'Cause They Will Fuck You Too
10. We Don't Have Fun When We're Together Anymore
11. You Go Away and I Don't Mind
12. All I Have to Give the World is Me

oh hell yeah

they're going on tour as a duo to support a book they have coming out as well. Looking forward to that, as I've never seen them; and while I like the last few albums well enough, I'd be happy to see a scaled down show; bummed I missed the Con anniversary shows.

those are the most tegan and sara-y song titles one could imagine.

they sound like the chapters of a self-help book - is that what they've written?

It's a memoir called "HIgh School"

https://teganandsara.com/highschool/

"“High School provides a purview of the queer adolescent experience. It is a story of two resilient young women who found their voices through authenticity, connection to others, music, and apparently a lot of experimentation with psychedelics.” - Mom"

the songs are all based on demos they recorded in high school too, but i think they've been rearranged and reassembled to some extent (there was mention of some that were edited together from pieces of multiple different demos)

I get why they would do this -- I'm pretty intrigued to hear the rest of it and how it all plays out

new album is awesome, best since heartthrob and... i may like it better who knows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeF6Woh8xF8

this is so good, it's like the glitchier songwriting of sainthood slipped into their pop production

Just saw that there is a TV adaptation of their memoir. Anyone watched it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_School_(2022_TV_series)

That's right, this also came out today, damn. I will get around to this.

I haven’t been a big fan of new electro pop T&S; sainthood was the last album that registered with me and that I go back to. Is this an entire album of stuff that sounds like the LEGO song?

no

well, I gave it a shot last night and couldn't make it past the first three songs. I'll attempt again tonight.

Good stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_KGGTOqIpQ

"Knockin' on Heaven's Door" chords work every time.

My one time through this album so far it hit me a bit like the Taylor album — fine but familiar-seeming work from people who've done work I like more. But I allow that both may grow on me.

i felt you in my legs
before i even met you

I LIKE HOW ALL THEIR SONGS ARE ABOUT WHAT FUCKUPS THEY ARE W GIRLS

― President Evil, Thursday, July 5, 2007 6:13 AM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

okay this is a less frightening T&S thread the other one that i opened up. i just never listened to them and for some reason i watched that scary documentary last night. i don't mind their voices! they are weird in a cool way. for some reason i had the mistaken impression that they did the old crone hat voice. but they don't. sorry, T&S. didn't mean to lump you in with the dreaded Cocorosie.

Yeah the documentary is a hell of an unsettled watch. The more so because it provides no final resolution.

its sad! that doc. and scary. but i mostly just felt bad for everyone. the price of having large open forums for fans? i mean obviously tons of people made lifelong friends on T&S sites/socials/etc. and that shouldn't be overlooked. it isn't quite as simple as INTERNET BAD. because obviously you don't have to be famous to have your life/info/money stolen from you online or even offline. just crazy how one person (i'm guessing it was one person) could be THAT active in messaging/texting people for so long to keep it all going. yeesh.