w/ Carlie Hanson | 8:00pm | 6161 Delmar Blvd. | All ages | $36 adv, $38.50 day of show
Tegan and Sara Quin have been spending much of the last few years living in the past. In 2019, the twin sisters released High School, a memoir of the pair growing up young, queer, and musically minded in mid-‘90s Calgary. While crafting their book, the pair re-recorded some of the teenaged songs they unearthed during the writing process, releasing it as their ninth album, Hey, I’m Just Like You. 2022 saw High School released as a universally beloved TV series on Amazon’s Freevee service, starring twins Railey and Seazynn Gilliland with Cobie Smulders and Kyle Bornheimer guesting as their parents. 2023 saw the Quins reaching even further back for Junior High, a two-part graphic memoir made in conjunction with cartoonist Tillie Walden, an Eisner Award-winner (for 2018’s Spinning) and the Cartoonist Laureate of the state of Vermont. Junior High’s first volume was just released this May.
So yes, Tegan and Sara have been living in the past, but not where it counts: their latest album, 2022’s Crybaby, is as fresh and vital as anything they’ve ever recorded. The pair have always been musically restless, shifting from Ani DiFranco-esque folk (2000’s This Business of Art) to lovelorn power-pop (2002’s If It Was You and 2004’s So Jealous, a fan favorite) to abrasive experimentalism (2007’s The Con) to icy new wave (2009’s Sainthood, a personal favorite) to full glossy synth-driven pop (2013’s Heartthrob, their biggest hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard Top 200). Crybaby still sees the Quin sisters embracing electronic elements but it feels different than the cool Sainthood or the slick Heartthrob: the giddy “Fucking Up What Matters” wouldn’t feel out of place next to Grouplove, Ting-Tings, or Tune-Yards on a playlist, while the glitchy “Yellow” rides a mellow verse and heartbeat-like groove that explodes into a stadium-filling chorus destined to send lighters and lit-up cell phones skyward at their upcoming Pageant show to sway to the beat. Crybaby has a sound that’s thoroughly modern and of-the-moment while being inimitably the work of Tegan and Sara Quin, and it should be a joy to hear its songs next to the rest of their best. | Jason Green
