Review: Tegan and Sara

Tegan and Sara is an act that's been floating around the periphery of my life nearly since they started off years ago. I've watched them appear in concert venue listings over the years, seeing they listed as playing in venues from the likes of Iota to the Birchmere to the Black Cat and, finally, selling out the Lisner Auditorium. I guess since they're still around, it's only natural to think that they'd start playing larger and larger venues. But all of their growth in popularity was totally lost on me. I guess I knew that they were lesbians, because I used to confuse them in my mind with T.A.T.u., that pseudo-lesbian Russian pop creation. And I always thought they sounded familiar because of the Sing Sing song Tegan that a friend played for me ages ago. They only ever really appeared as a full blip on the center of my radar screen when Zack posted a video of theirs here on TNG.

So, after only recently figuring out who they really are and having heard only one song, I ended up with two free tickets to their show last weekend, November 24, at Lisner...


As I approached the venue on my bike, riding along side a friend, I started noticing something that confirmed that we were heading in the right direction. Girls. Lots and lots of girls. Everywhere, crowding the sidewalk, walking hand-in-hand, smiling and giggling like, well, little girls. There was a faint smell of cigarettes and patchouli in the air. It was what I would imagine the sidewalk outside of Ladyfest would look like, or the parking lot of Lilith Fair. Except younger. And with chaperons. At one point, I thought we were going to the mid-Atlantic semi-annual PFLAG conference. We found our seats and scanned the crowd: I was really impressed by all these teenaged and early twenties girls and women gathering for a show they've been excited about since the last Ani DiFranco show. And their supportive parents. And the handful of late-twenties and early-thirties gay men just along for the ride and probably as impressed as I was.

As for the show itself, I'd have to give it a big "eh." I guess the biggest disappointment of the actual music was the fact that, while in the actual spotlights, the girls' vocals and instruments were completely overshadowed by the drums and bass. Perhaps folk-rock is supposed to be mixed that way, but I had a really hard time feeling like any of the songs were more than a series of loud low tones vibrating my ribcage. I really felt like I couldn't get a feeling for any of the songs, as what might set them apart was being drowned out by the other, deeper tones.

What the show lacked in musical clarity and personality was more than accommodated for by the girls' great between-song banter. After the first few songs, Sara asked their lighting guy if they could turn on the house lights a touch so she could actually see the audience. They really wanted visual contact with the cheering, screaming masses who were really enjoying their performance. Once eye-contact was established with the audience, many breaks between songs were filled with great personal stories from one or another of the girls. The stories were great, and included:

• Sara getting so drunk during a past visit to DC that the next morning as they hit the road she really needed to puke, but she had a hard time finding a McDonalds bathroom wasn't, literally, a crime scene.
• Sara admitting that when she video chats, she rarely looks at the other person but instead checks out what she looks like from every imaginable angle.
• Tegan discussing how the song she was about to play was written during a stay at an "Art Farm" where raccoons could be heard all night every night eating the freshly laid down sod in their back yard.
• Sara being super disturbed at finding a video on a fan site of three girls in Florida who were at a T&S concert shaking their asses to their favorite song. She actually had the house lights turned up all the way for the following song, so the audience members could police one another and ensure that there was no ass shaking going on.

I guess I found it surprising that two artists who share so much about themselves on stage via stories were so happy to hide, musically, behind loud drums and bass. I also was a bit surprised about the adult nature of some of the stories, including profanity, in front of such a family-seeming audience.

The one musical highlight of the night was when the girls performed that Rihanna Umbrella song. I was so surprised and pleased that I took some video of it with my cell phone, which I promptly uploaded to YouTube. (See below.)

So over all, it was a really enjoyable evening, but the musical experience had very little to do with it for me. All these cute young girls coming out in hand-holding droves to see these hot lesbian twin sisters perform live. Of course, I had to wonder how many of these young ladies were just going through "a phase" or were just LUGs. But those doubts quickly faded as I basked in the notion that artists like Tegan and Sara were helping the next generation of queer kids find greater acceptance, and self-confidence.

My crappy video capture of T&S Covering Umbrella:


Some Canadian's much better video capture: