The Comedy and Pop Chops of Tegan and Sara
First things first: the Tegan and Sara show at the Triple Door tonight is sold out, but we did see a lot of SRO happening last night, so you might take your chances. Or simply show up at the Queen Anne Easy Street Records at 4pm today for their in-store appearance. Either way, they come highly recommended by us, and you might as well make plans to see them at the Showbox on December 3.
If this whole pop star thing doesn't work out, twins Tegan and Sara [MySpace]can easily find bookings as Canada's (Calgary, Alberta, to be precise) answer to the Smothers Brothers -- Sara is the stream-of-consciousness motormouth who admitted to asking her therapist to verify Tegan's existence for her, and Tegan is the voice-of-reason sweetheart who repeatedly thanks her guitar tech for being so darn nice. (As you know, most Canadians are darn nice people, have a cute little accent, and don't pre-emptively invade other countries.) However, Tegan does point out that Sara's lyrics "I'm not unfaithful but I'll stray / when I get a little scared / I run run run," is a backwards way of confessing she's cheater, and so Sara points out, in return, that Tegan's a bitch.
They played through the whole of their new album, The Con first, then took to picking through the back catalog, closing with "Walking with a Ghost" (which was covered by The White Stripes -- everyone else seems compelled to mention that and why should we be different). It didn't seem like they were coming back out for an encore, the house lights went up, we left, but then as we were walking out we thought we heard more cheering so who knows. They said playing the album in concert took about 35 minutes; it was an adrenalin-boosted tempo, with less of that dreamy Death Cab swoon you get on the CD. Some songs were like if the Ramones were playing Indigo Girls covers -- whom we mention not necessarily for content or style reasons, but because of the closeness of the singing. In fact, the timbre of Sara's voice made us think of a New Wave band, not indie-folk.
You use what you have, and Tegan and Sara win you over with a glimpse of the tangle of twin-consciousness, displays of the ties that bind and blur and bless, married to a love of a riff that sticks the landing, and hooky lyrics that if they chew like bubblegum taste like pine resin and snap with woody snaps. "Nineteen" begins: "I felt you in my legs before I ever met you," and somehow makes perfect sense. And then there's the vaguely ominous "When I was eight I was sure I was growing nerves, like steel in my palm," which comes out sounding as familiar as a sing-along. Live, with the easy banter of sibling rivalry, it's a freakishly engaging show.
