Grade: A-
It might be their eighth album and nearing the end of their second decade of making music together, but Tegan and Sara didn’t slow down in the slightest in their latest release, “Love You to Death.”
The twin sister duo has touched almost every genre of music at this point as they've transitioned seamlessly from folk to punk to rock to indie pop. Their last release, 2013’s “Heartthrob,” marked Tegan and Sara’s first foray into the pop world, and they hit their target perfectly.
“Love You to Death,” while being a catchy and glossy record, does feel a bit like “Heartthrob’s” little sister or an afterword. The songs from both albums follow the similar theme of love, which isn’t surprising — Tegan and Sara have been writing love songs since their 1999 debut “Under Feet Like Ours,” which featured raw vocals and acoustic guitar.
But while “Heartthrob” felt like listening to the story of a breakup that anyone could relate to, “Love You to Death” was more scattered and less cohesive. The songs are catchy and could easily top the Billboard Hot 100, but there’s less of a storyline to cling to. And, if you’re not listening to the lyrics, the songs can blur together in the similarity of their synth beats and clean-cut vocals.
The sisters’ songwriting, though, continues to impress. Tegan and Sara worked with producer Greg Kurstin to finesse their pop sound, but their lyrics still echo back to the early days.
The two paint pictures in “Love You to Death” of every kind of relationship, and they don’t sugarcoat anything.
Tegan and Sara, both gay, have never shied away from addressing queer issues in their lyrics. On their album “The Con,” they address same-sex marriage head-on in “I Was Married” with lyrics like “The muscles fought so long / to control against the pull of / one magnet to another."
Sara similarly sings about a relationship she’s in now with a bisexual girl in their hit “Boyfriend.”
“You call me up like you want your best friend / you turn me on like you want your boyfriend / but I don’t wanna be your secret anymore,” she sings.
While nine out of 10 songs on the short album are filled to the brim with catchy hooks and beats, “100x” stands out for its serious, melancholy tone.
The song harkens back to when Tegan and Sara wrote songs that felt more personal, rawer.
Much like 2007’s single “Call it Off,” the duo addresses the idea of leaving a relationship and the pain associated with hurting someone else. “It was cruel of me to do what I did to you / it was wrong of me to hurt such a big part of you / I swear I tried to leave you at least a hundred times a day."
Tegan and Sara continue — and I have no doubt they will move forward with more energy than ever — to be prolific songwriters and please the masses.
My favorite thing about the duo is their ability to be unapologetically themselves, and write the kind of music they’re interested in without worrying about what everyone else wants.
You can tell it’s not about money or fame for Tegan and Sara. It’s about truth, and it doesn’t get much more powerful than that.
