I've been a big fan over everything they've released, but I've heard Sainthood in its entirety and I think it's the best thing they've ever done.
The first single and video is for "Hell." I actually think it's one of the weakest songs on the album, but it seems the most commercial which might explain why it was chosen. I still like the song, but if your interested in the cd, maybe checkout their myspace page where, I think, the whole album is still being streamed.
It starts off with the song "Arrow" and I don't think there's really a dud to be found.
I'd give the album an A-. The only "mainstream" review I've read was from Spin and they gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
I've listened through it one time. Definitely is more similar to the last album than the previous ones and that to me is a slight disappointment. I REALLY liked the vocal melodies from "So Jealous" more that "The Con". Some of the best albums require a few spins to totally get, so I'll give it more time.
A FEW YEARS AGO, indie-rock duo Tegan and Sara finally gained the attention of the mainstream by walking with a ghost. Now, with the sisters' latest album, "Sainthood," the twins are kind of doing the same thing — visiting the haunting memories of an old relationship.
But if you're looking for an acoustic rock-based sound, you'll find that it's vanished in the blink of an eye.
This album is the most upbeat of the sisters' career: They rip through 13 tracks in a little more than 37 minutes, and there's a plethora of electronica and punk influences that keep the pace pretty snappy. In fact, no song goes past three and a half minutes, and the ones that come close — such as "The Cure" and first single "Hell" — actually seem strange because the others are such brief bouts of melancholic energy.
And for the most part, the songs wallow in the sisters' sadness: Just as a press release describes, the album is "inspired by emotional longing and the quiet actions we hope may be noticed by the objects of our affection. ... We practice our sainthood in the hope that we will be rewarded with adoration. As we are driven to become anything for someone else, we sometimes become martyrs for our cause." Additionally, the album's themes are supposedly inspired by the lyrics of the song "Came So Far for Beauty" by Leonard Cohen, which discuss how "the rumors of my virtue / They moved her not at all."
Yes, it's all pretty Debbie Downer-esque. But Tegan and Sara expertly balance their lyrics about tracking down lovers, being reduced to immaturity and shedding endless streaks of tears with happily bouncy beats that, while completely at odds with the subject matter at hand, are so intrinsically catchy that they're hard to tune out. And although each sister normally writes solo — "Paperback Head," the album's 10th track, is the first song they've ever created together — the album's style stays fluid and consistent throughout.
From opener "Arrow," which starts with a jauntily danceable beat but includes insistent lines from Sara that ponder whether her love would "cling and wage an intimate fight for me" or "tell me tough-love style," to "Hell," in which Tegan flirts with a Ramones-like punk structure and persists in claiming, "I know you feel it too / These words get overused / When we get up, and over it, and over them," you can definitely tell these are not two happy women. Instead, they're all about longing, sorrow and wondering what went wrong in their quests for love: Was it moving too fast (as Tegan wonders in "Don't Rush"), losing focus on the important things (as Sara laments in "On Directing") or getting too caught up in the "wild fires" (as they both describe in "Paperback Head")?
There are few lyrical answers on "Sainthood," but thankfully lots of musical experimentation on behalf of the twins, who venture further into pop territory on most of the album. For example, although "Hell" sags under its prototypical beat, the list of complaints on "Northshore" — in which Tegan commands her lover "Don't cringe / Don't clich / Don't look / Don't flich / Don't leave me" — is well-complemented by the punchy, early pogo-punk instrumentation. And "Alligator Tears" is a perfect nod to the '80s, reminiscent of Cyndi Lauper with its use of layered synths and Sara's lyrics about her never-ending weeping.
Sure, it can sound a little melodramatic, but it's the duo's unabashed emotions — especially on later tracks "Sentimental Tune," which benefits both from rapid wordplay (such as Sarah's proclamation "don't worry, I'm ready for a fight") and strong strings, and closer "Someday," in which Tegan questions, "I don't want to know what you do without me / I don't want to know what I'll be without you") — keep the album afloat.
They're not necessarily saints, but "Sainthood" is a good example of what Tegan and Sara can do when they let go of the past and give up the "Ghost."
Written by Express contributor Roxana Hadadi
Photo by Pamela Littky
"I know it turns you off when I get talking like a teen," sings Sara Quin in "On Directing," a cut from the sixth studio album by Quin and her twin sister, Tegan.
Turnoff or not, talking like teens is precisely what once distinguished this Canadian duo from a nation (a continent!) of similar strummers: On early records -- their 1999 debut, Under Feet Like Ours, and 2004 breakthrough So Jealous -- Tegan and Sara's lovelorn ruminations had a deceptively casual verisimilitude, with lyrics that read like instant-message transcripts and arrangements that gave coffee-shop folk some new-wave fizz. The siblings' intricate harmonies even served to replicate the overlapping layers of tenth-grade conversation.
With 2007's The Con, though, Tegan and Sara began pushing their music in a more adult direction, toward something darker and less innocent. "Remember when I was sweet and unexplainable?" Sara asked in "Back in Your Head," over an anxiously tick-tocking guitar and murmuring organ. "Nothing like this person, unlovable."
That journey away from the juvenile continues on Sainthood, which the Quins say was inspired by "Came So Far for Beauty," the deeply resigned 1979 ballad by fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen. (For a maturing tunesmith, invoking Cohen is tantamount to a novelist describing her new book as an homage to Tolstoy.) "All I said to you, all I did for you, seems so silly to me now," Tegan concedes in "The Cure," a taut jangle-rock number whose title appears to acknowledge the moody keyboard line borrowed from the Cure's "Lovesong." Later, in "Night Watch," Sara insists, "I need distance from your body / I deserve this anguish on my house." Ever hear a teen utter those words?
Coproduced (as was The Con) by Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie, Sainthood has a thick, post-punk muscularity that's new to the duo. In opener "Arrow," Sara sings about "the feathers of an arrow," but there's nothing wispy about the track's juddering synth pattern. "Don't Rush" rides a grimy bass line Trent Reznor could admire, while "Alligator" sports a bottom-heavy, blue-eyed soul groove. "Northshore," in which Tegan admits that her "misery's so addictive," is two minutes of choppy fuzz-guitar freak-out.
Grown-up is a good look for the sisters, who write about romantic obsession much more compellingly than the majority of their peers; the tougher textures here lend weight to their descriptions of searching and not finding (or of searching and finding, and then wondering if the search was really worth all the trouble). In an interesting parallel to that thematic narrative, Sainthood marks the first time in their decade as a band that Tegan and Sara attempted to write with each other, instead of toiling separately and then fleshing out the results together. Apparently, the experiment didn't yield much; none of the 13 songs here came from a collaborative songwriting trip they took to New Orleans last year.
Yet listening to Sainthood -- to its odd structural disjunctions and shifting lyrical uncertainties -- it's difficult to imagine that the sisters would make records as powerful if they continued to try to work in that way. Tegan and Sara's music may no longer be the stuff of teens, but its strength remains in how much it feels like two people talking.
Giantrobo
11-06-09, 02:36 AM
I kinda figured out that I liked them a few years back after hearing their music being played at Border's. But I never went any further with it.
So the other day they were on Conan and I really dug them. For the last few days I've been listening to their stuff on Youtube and on their Facebook page and I think I'm ready to plunge in. :up:
Hiro11
11-06-09, 09:24 AM
I found this one to be a pretty good album, but not close to the level of "The Con". A lot of the songs seem fairly rote and the album is missing a lot of the terrific hooks from their last two albums. I really, really liked "The Con", in fact I think it's one of the best albums I've heard in the past five years. My expectations may have been a bit too high for "Sainthood"...
Liver&Onions
11-06-09, 12:43 PM
I liked the COn a lot, and even So Jealous. I have only had one listen through of this so far, but it's good stuff. I'm seeing them in April here in Portland...a far cry from the last time I saw then when they opened for another small Canadian act Hayden at a small hall at the University of Calgary.
DRG
11-10-09, 12:58 PM
I like it so far, but they are definitely moving away from the T&S sound I fell in love with on If It Was You (my favorite T&S album) and So Jealous. This is probably their most mainstream-sounding album IMO, which I don't think is inherently a bad thing but I do miss some of the quirk. That said, there's still some stuff I love on this one and probably more once I give it a few more spins.
Buy: