Tegan & Sara at The Granada
Tegan and Sara
Monday, 11-06-07
The Granada
Better than: “The Next Great American Band”
Review and Photos by Richard Gintowt
Tegan & Sara are twin sisters from Calgary (ya know, up there in Canada, eh?) who part their mullets the same way and play in a band together. They’re a bit punk, a bit folk, and a whole lotta pop. There’s nothing too deep or compelling about their music, but it’s likable enough and seems to have hit its stride with a new album called The Con (partly due, perhaps, to the contributions of Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla and The Rentals’ Matt Sharp).
Unfortunately, Tegan & Sara have awful taste in music, or at least that’s the impression they gave off by choosing Northern State as their opening act. Coming off like a third-rate Beastie Girls, the tribe of female MCs (perhaps too kind a word) unleashed groan-a-minute couplets like I’m Hester Prynne / Let me begin and introduced the apathetic crowd to lame slang words like “cha’ll” (as in “if it’s alright wit’ cha’ll”). If Northern State’s goal was to pump up the crowd, it worked – I was totally psyched when they left the stage and T&S started setting up.
The sold-out crowd was packed with lesbians, and I’m not saying that because I have some kind of lezbo gaydar or something, but simply because they were everywhere holding hands and kissing. At one point in the show, Sara made reference to unbuttoning her shirt and was greeted with a series of shrill catcalls. Both Tegan & Sara are “out” performers, but it’s not like their music addresses particularly lesbian subject matter. This phenomenon perplexes me – does a band earn an instant gay fanbase just by being gay? Given that there are so few outspokenly gay bands, it’s not unlikely.
T&S’s performance was a lot like their records: fun for a few songs, and then a bit tiresome. T&S may have developed as songwriters, but they haven’t made great strides as musicians. The three black-shirted fellows backing the girls helped a great deal, but they seemed too far removed from the limelight to really elevate the performance. Another turn-off was the duo’s rambling stage banter, highlighted by Tegan’s admission that “I’m a bitch – you wouldn’t want to date me” (well, you probably wouldn’t want to date me either, Tegan). For a couple songs off the new record (“The Con” and “Back in Your Head”), the pace picked up. The sisters do have some mighty vocal chords, and when they harmonize it’s quite a nifty thing.
Honestly, I’m probably the wrong person to pick these girls apart. They’re good at what they do (mass-appeal pop music), their hearts are certainly in the right place, and they’re light years better than Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch and whoever else is fucking up music for the rest of us. But it’s disappointing to see T&S sell out a $20 ticket at the Granada when attendance is comparably sparse for better female-fronted acts like St. Vincent and Camera Obscura.
Personal bias: My distaste for Northern State may have something to do with the fact that I never really liked the Beastie Boys, whom I equate to a rapping Gilbert Gottfried.
Random detail: Northern State wore Northern State t-shirts onstage. I’m pretty sure that’s lame.
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