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Interview: Tegan and Sara

By Beansie Saretsky from CJLO's Maiden Voyage (Fridays, 12-1pm) and Julie Matson from CJLO's With Gay Abandon (Fridays, 1-2pm)

Song: "Closer", Heartthrob

Beansie: Your new album is coming out in January, you have the single "Closer" and it's definitely a pop song, and have been working with producers that have also worked with people like Kelly Clarkson and Dr. Dre, so what was that like compared to the other six records?

Tegan: When we started writing and demoing the record there was no "we want to make a pop record".  I think maybe we were the only ones who thought this, but we think that we write pop songs and we just over the years have stylistically fit in with what's happening and right now pop's cool, there's lots of great pop music. In the mid 2000s when we were making So Jealous and The Con, indie rock was relevant and that's what we listened to... Sometimes I feel like we're olden timey cause we're not that current, we're definitely influenced by what's happening in music ... a lot of Sainthood was influenced by Rihanna and Alicia Keys... we're empowered by strong vocals by women... I think when we went in to make the record, we wanted to find a producer that would take us to the next level and push our vocals and production to the next level but the songs themselves I think just came out naturally like every other time.  

Song: "Closer", Heartthrob

Tegan:  The producer we ended up doing the bulk of the record with, what we loved about Greg was that he was Beck's musical director for 10 years so he's just a music guy. He was like hiring a producer and 10 musicians, he was like a transformer that would just break into different shapes every 5 minutes and he had also just finished the new Shins record and... I was like this is the guy who's doing the P!nk record  and Kelly Clarkson record and Ke$ha songs but he just did the shins record so if The Shins think he's cool and still credible I think we can go into the studio with him and we're not going to make some nonsense record and "Closer" is definitely the most pop song on the record, and the record itself, while it's sonically pop, it's  still quintessential Tegan and Sara and is still devastatingly emotional and sad so I think T&S fans will still find something really loveable about the record.

Song: "Call It Off", The Con

Beansie: Throughout the years you've started using other multimedia platforms to go along with the record, like your DVDs and starting to do webisodes and things like that when you're on tour and recording your albums. So first part of the question: have you felt that recording these webisodes talking about recording the music, has it influenced the music at all? And then how do you think that has influenced your relationship with your fans?

Sara: I don't think I've ever been asked that question before (laughter)... initially our interest in videos, and blogs, and photo blogs, and books and DVDs... they were a combination of taking the media in our own hands and saying even if we don't get radio, or mainstream television we can use the internet as a platform to speak to our audience directly and without having the middleman micromanage or filter us we can shape this into something that is tactile for our audience and they can communicate and experience us in a way that I think that we're best experienced. The second part of that really just had to do with being creative. We spent a lot of time writing songs and a lot of time making the record but then we spend a lot of time touring, and then there are giant gaps of time where maybe our artistic brains aren't being stimulated or exercised and to do these finite projects that have an end and when we get bored we can stop doing them, it adds to the experience of being a musician and an artist.

Julie: Do you have anything?

Tegan: No, I completely agree with everything Sara said. 

(Laughter)

Song: "Don't Confess", If It Was You

Julie: My college radio training comes from Vancouver, I was trained with Nardwuar and his ultimate question is "why should people care?"

Tegan: Right.

Julie: And my question is, "why should people care about Tegan and Sara?" 

(Laughter)

Tegan: Well, this is something that we've talked a lot about in the last few months because when we originally started talking about Heartthrob and put out "Closer" there was a initial response from some of our diehard fans that was like "we don't want you to get bigger, we don't want you to get more popular, we don't want you to sell more records, we don't want it to sound better" and we started this really fascinating public discourse with our fan base where it was like a combination of factors of why you should care... we're evolving, we've been playing music for 17 years and if we were putting out the same records no one would care so I think we're proving that if you constantly adapt and evolve and inspire yourselves, you to inspire your audience and continue to be relevant and that's why people should care is because we put everything into our records. Over the last 17 years we've developed strong voices in terms of being role models and advocates for the queer community and we have become strong voices for women and feminism and we've become strong allies to the indie community and as indie music pushed into the pop world we were advocates for that. I think we have proven not only to musicians but to a lot of our audience that if you really truly stand behind what you say you can really do anything. Sara and I have had records that are acoustic, we have songs like ‘Call It Off' and then we have songs like "Feel It In My Bones", like collaborations with Tiesto. We've proven that if you really mean it, if it's very heartfelt, then your audience and the people that you look up to and your peers will embrace that art form so I think that's another reason to care, because we really care, we care, so if you care we'll care along with you, it's a real care bear fest.

(Laughter)

Song: "Nineteen" (acoustic), Interface sessions

Beansie: So how does it feel to have a song on Virgin radio?

Sara: I mean we're grateful for the radio play even if sometimes the mediums that get our music out to new people aren't the ones that we actively enjoy... or that I haven't had cable tv or radio interest in over a decade, that's not how I'm informed about music or news... those aren't the formats that I'm actively pursuing for my information but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't participate because there are a lot of people who are. I look at radio as, I don't know, a necessary by product of cars and commuting and people who need to have access to something that's quite broad and mainstream. I think there's a demographic out there listening to radio that would still be excited about Tegan and Sara the way they get excited about the new Kanye West single. For those that are looking for more depth or want to know more about us there's lots of ways to actively seek out that information whether it's on the internet or college radio or through our back catalog or Spotify. I just look at it now that even if there are certain aspects of mainstream culture that drive me crazy cause I see myself as being more niche, I just think, I was a suburban 17 year old listening to the radio and I just think that if I can reach those people through whatever medium I'm not going to discriminate against it.

Tegan: Don't hate!

Sara: I definitely don't hate radio, I hear people knocking radio and mainstream television all the time and I just think man, that's what I grew up on, and I became able to extrapolate what I thought was of value for myself and then I was able to use it as a jumping off point for other things. Like Smashing Pumpkins, that's all I  listened to when I was in high school, that's what I loved, and without the Smashing Pumpkins I would have never gone back and discovered things like My Bloody Valentine or I would have never known about The Pixies without knowing about Nirvana  and vice versa. So if Tegan and I become the band that is sort of the gateway drug into more indie culture, great, and if Paramour is the gateway drug into things like Tegan and Sara, I see it as a universe where things are all connected.

Tegan: We're gateway bands!

Beansie: Well especially growing up in a city like Calgary where you're in the car all the time -

Sara: Ooh yeah.

Beansie: Radio is something - 

Sara: Huge.

Beansie: I remember hearing "The Con" on the X, the alternative radio station -

Tegan: X 92

Beansie: Yep, like eight years ago and thinking "oh, they're on the radio, that's pretty cool!" Now it's Virgin radio so it's interesting to see the records evolving to the different radio stations -

Sara: Songs too, before it used to be like you had to be the right kind of band and have the right kind of album to be on the station and I think there will always be stations that will play some of our deeper cuts or our more alternative songs, like Virgin may not play "Walking With a Ghost"... maybe we're the band that is able to fit on a couple different formats and that will bring us a diverse audience... we're very confident that the Virgin listener that will hear closer who thinks they know what kind of band we are, we're convinced we can bring them into the fold and that they'll be interested in everything we've been doing, even the deep cuts.

Song: "Hello", The Yellow Demo

Julie: You know, we're college/community radio, we're not Virgin ...

(Laughter)

Tegan: Part of leading up to making Heartthrob one of the conversations that really inspired me about Greg... is that he said it was misleading to say that pop music isn't interesting, because pop music is very interesting right now, some of it is crap but some is extremely difficult to make and original and it's tough to say that in a time where things aren't original... a lot of that music that still feels organic isn't made organically anymore and he's like you being old school and archaic about your process doesn't make you relevant, it just makes you a dinosaur... I really agree with what Sara was saying about the gateway bands. If you find us on college radio... or the Virgins of the world, either way you found us and I think we're going to help change the way mainstream radio looks this year, I really believe that, I mean we're being played on stations all across Canada, every format. We went alternative and pop started to add us, so we went to pop. There's an instinct where you're like "eee, is that where we belong?"  but then I thought what if we change the horizon a little bit and open the door to other bands. That happened to us the last time we got radio play in the mid 2000s with "Walking With A Ghost"... Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand were huge and they opened the door for bands like us us to sneak in there along with Metallica and Sound Garden and all these other dude bands... and we've been out playing alternative radio festivals for the last two weeks and we're like the only females there, we played one show with Metric. I don't care what format plays us at this point, I just really want to change music a little bit, or a lot, but I'll take a little. So I think Heartthrob is that record, it's bigger than even the concept we had when we made it, it's become this massive idea that we could infiltrate and change things... while breaking your heart. 

(Laughter)

Beansie: Wonderful

Julie: Thanks guys!

Song: "Where Does The Good Go?", So Jealous

Show Review: Tegan and Sara @ Metropolis

by Beansie Saretsky from CJLO's Maiden Voyage (Fridays, 12-1pm)

I was a little surprised to find out that Tegan and Sara were going to be playing a show on December 16th since their seventh full length, Heartthrob, doesn't come out until January 29th. High off the success of their second single on the album, "Closer", the twins from Calgary seemed like they wanted to let their old fans know that they still have all of the old emotion of their past albums, but give a preview of the new sound that Heartthrob has in store.

Tegan and Sara fans are a picky bunch. I guess that's what happens when you have a predominantly minority fan base, plus the pretentiousness of being a long-time fan (no matter how cool or not cool the artist is, every artist has those fans). There have been grumblings about Tegan and Sara being played on Virgin Radio and going mainstream, but they've been at it for seventeen years so it must seem like a long time coming for the duo. 

I told Tegan at the end of the interview that I would be reviewing the show and she told me that “it better be a good one!” I said that they better play a good show then and she said “don't worry, we always do”... or something along those lines. We had turned the recorder off by then. However, when Tegan and Sara took to the stage later that night, they actually seemed a little bit tired. Whether it was the realization that the Montreal audience was bound to contain people they knew in their personal lives (up until recently Sara lived in Montreal), or the fact that the new direction of their music has caused some discord with long-time fans, they seemed to take a couple songs to find their groove. That didn't matter to the crowd, however, who let out a high pitched cheer at the beginning of every single song… and I mean every song. From the girl in the leopard print dress in front of me dancing like she was at the club, to the dad on the other side of me hand drumming and singing every word, to the sheer amount of American Apparel hoodies on teenage lesbians (my own perceived age seriously took a tumble at this concert, I looked around and de-aged about 10 years, sad that I can blend in with a group of 14-16 year olds) - Tegan and Sara shows are always vibrating with a positive energy. 

I've seen Tegan and Sara live around five times, and one thing about the duo is that they take liberties with their vocals when they sing live. It usually bothers the fans that are super committed to singing along to their favourite songs, but it's interesting to hear different takes on pieces you know off by heart. They played a string of hits as well as four songs off of their upcoming album. Fan favourites included: "Back in Your Head", "So Jealous", "Where Does The Good Go?", "The Con", "Walking With A Ghost", "Living Room", and an acoustic version of "Nineteen" from the Interface sessions. The two new songs in the middle of the set included a guitar pop ballad by Tegan that seemed like it would be a solid song on another listen, but not too far off from their older material. However, the next song was very much in another direction. Both Tegan and Sara sang on it (they usually only sing harmony for each other) and it had a touch of an R&B feel to it that I was surprised by. What pleased me, however, was this song is one of the first times in their lyrical history that they addressed the love object as ‘girl' instead of in the first person, which I thought was a nice subtle way to reference queerness to a mainstream audience. 

The crowd was finally treated to their typical on-stage banter after around eight or nine songs. Sara said that she had been nervous that no one would come to a show on a Sunday night, but then remembered that it was in Montreal (everyone screamed) then launched into a story about going to an afterhours party in… Laval (everyone booed, she told them to cool it) and that things happened there that she's never forgotten. Tegan and Sara were very aware of the city they were playing in, prepping their next song, "Feel It In My Bones", by telling the audience that the music video had been filmed in the city (everyone screamed again).

The encore seemed to come extremely fast, and fans seemed surprised. However, the encore was five songs long and included three of their most heart wrenching songs. They started off with "Closer", their latest single (an extremely catchy pop hit and arguably their happiest song ever) and then threw the audience into a depression with a plaintive acoustic version of "Dark Come Soon", followed by "Call It Off". The audience barely had time to recover from two of Tegan's saddest songs before Sara told everyone “don't clap a beat to this next song or it will be a runaway train” and then launched into "Not Tonight", a song by Sara that pretty much every Tegan and Sara fan has cried to at one point or another. The duo closed off with "Body Work", a Morgan Page song that they featured on this past year, which I personally am not the biggest fan of due to the '80s techno vibe it gives off. Over all, Tegan and Sara put on a solid show like they always do, but it was lacking in their usual spunky intimacy with the audience. It will be interesting to see if the further they break into the mainstream the less they'll converse on stage. I wasn't planning on paying attention to Heartthrob's release, but after hearing "Closer" and seeing this show, Tegan and Sara have revived my interest and I will definitely give it a listen.