Tegan and Sara: crybaby

It’s fitting that for a duo that’s counseled and comforted countless teenage lunatics over the years, Tegan and Sara have spent the final decade of their careers in an odd state of stalled development. With the release of 2013 heartthrob, the twin sisters made a surprising — and notably successful — turn to bold, sharply written pop inspired by the ’80s, the kind they listened to as kids. That album and its lead single, the saucy and still scintillating “Closer,” were some of the couple’s most commercially successful albums to date; Unsurprisingly, they’ve been drawing from the same source ever since, with rapidly diminishing yields. First came 2016 love you to death, which spawned the brilliant single “Boyfriend” but otherwise paled in comparison to its predecessor. And then there was 2019 hey i’m just like youa sweet but overall patchy album of teenage demos remastered in the band’s 2010s vein.

crybaby attempts to return, at least in part, to the hook-driven indie rock of the band’s earlier albums. Working with producer John Congleton – who ironically is better known for working with the likes of Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten to make their records sound bigger, not smaller – the two are actively trying to polish up the flawless finish of their recent releases Guitars and live drums return to the fore, embracing shaggy song structures and agitated vocals.

At the same time, Tegan and Sara obviously can’t quite let go of pop music. So crybaby Stuck in an odd middle ground between big-budget indie and low-budget pop: It’s all howling vocals and the kind of vocal processing that Skrillex and Diplo popularized with “Where Are Ü Now” that then turned pop for next five or so years dominated. The overwhelming taste of crybaby is a highly pitched ornamental vocal sample and gives the album an embarrassing poignancy, like milk left out of the fridge a minute too long; the technique is in almost every song, and that means that even the best songs are here – the sassy opener “I Can’t Grow Up”, the beautiful wannabe country ballad “Faded Like a Feeling”, the devastatingly tired ” Whatever That Was” – feel like they’re demos recorded in 2014.

Once in a while, crybaby actually manages to show potential new avenues for Tegan and Sara. “I Can’t Grow Up” plays like a happier, more melodic rendition of Electroclash, with its howling, anxious verses (“You spin me ’round again/Twist my head until you listen ‘pop'”) that some of the records deliver the most exciting, full-blooded moments. It’s an appealingly prickly song that touches on ideas of re-living unhealthy relationship dynamics and is executed far more sharply than the rest of the record. Not every song feels quite as dexterous, and many lack the succinct specificity that is the Quins’ trademark: Notably the maudlin synth ballad “Yellow,” with its chorus of “This Bruise Ain’t Black, It’s Yellow/My Sweet Heart.” sing”. out like hell” feels unusually confused, caught up in boggy puns.

It’s understandable that Tegan and Sara are caught in an endless transition between the pop-punk of their 2000 release and the glamor of their 2010 work; In recent years, the pair have released complete reinterpretations of both albums The Con and So jealous, write memoirs and have these memoirs turned into a TV show. but crybaby shows neither the maturity of a band in a retrospective era nor the sense of fun of a band trying not to grow up; Instead, there’s something loose about it – like it’s an accompaniment to all the myth-making and nostalgia, and not the other way around.