From the propulsive "Arrow" to buoyant closer "Someday," the songs feature a clean precision, referencing classic girl-group pop while still sounding entirely of-the-moment. The music, too, carries a concise rhythmic thrust that finds the band charting relatively new territory. "(They felt) very linear and very aggressive. "That's the downfall to our first couple records, was how specific they felt," Tegan said. Both say they aimed to convert the personal to the universal here, more so than ever before. "I wanted to stand on the balcony of my neighbourhood and scream at everybody: 'Stop smoking crack! Stop falling in love!"' Tegan said with a laugh.īeyond the album's overarching concept - aspiring to perfection for someone else's sake - the Quins' lyrics are typically angsty and relatable. She saw parallels between the behaviour of addicts and her own lovestruck "insanity," and used that metaphor to write three songs: "Don't Rush," "The Cure" and "Hell." "This sucks."īut she found inspiration in the environs of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the drug-plagued zone where she lives. "I was happy, so it was like what the (hell) am I gonna write about?" she said with a laugh. The unrequited love she wrote about on "The Con" came around. Tegan, meanwhile, was in a very different place. That was the first time I felt like this is true masochism, to be onstage having to sing these songs and entertain people with what is true pain. We were trying to be friends, we were dismantling this huge epic life. "The woman that I was with, she does all of our artwork and our website and the backdrop and the merch, and she was everywhere. "There was something particularly absurd about getting up onstage every night and singing songs about the breakup I was going through, and having all these happy, excited teenagers and people sing at me," she said. She was dealing with a difficult break-up ("it was a big relationship for me, I had been with the person for five years, she and I had owned a house," she says) while touring in support of the new album. Sara, in fact, struggled through one of the darker periods of her life in the two years following 2007's "The Con." The title, "Sainthood," comes from a Leonard Cohen lyric that the sisters thought was fitting for a record that explores the relationship between faith and love. Obsession is, in fact, one of the major themes of the group's new record, which finds the duo moving further toward the '80s electro-pop they've flirted with in the past. "I realized how much more of a patient songwriter I am and how I obsess over details." "How much better I am at it than you?" Tegan interjected. "But it also really, I was finally able to put into words and articulate-" "It certainly illuminated for me the differences between our writing styles, Tegan and I," Sara told The Canadian Press during interviews at a Toronto hotel.
Only one song from the trip actually made it onto the record ("Paperback Head"), but the pair considered the collaboration a success - even if it was, at times, trying. They live across the country from one another (Tegan in Vancouver, Sara in Montreal) and have long split the songwriting on their albums practically down the middle.Īnd yet, "Sainthood," their frequently surprising sixth album, actually found the duo moving closer together, trying to write together for the first time during a trip to New Orleans. While the duo once dressed in similarly punked-out threads, during a recent promotional stop they looked like a study in contrasts: Tegan wore a sleeveless striped shirt that showed off the ample tattoo ink running along her arms, while twin sister Sara wore a crisp light blue button-down shirt and dress pants.
TORONTO - As the years pass, Tegan and Sara Quin would seem to be moving further and further away from each other.
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