Sing Out Sisters

by Neil Drumming

Photographs by Christopher Wahl

canadian wonder twins TEGAN AND SARA wrestle with pop, privacy, and people's perceptions

TEGAN QUIN does not seem like much of a rock star. Waiting for a ride, sitting at a window table of a Toronto hotel restaurant, with her modest denim jacket buttoned up to her neck, the 22-year-old Calgary-born singer-songwriter could be any teenager caught off guard and underdressed in the first real snow of the season. Cradling a cup of Earl Grey, she gabs effortlessly about anything and everything—her childhood, her family, fellow Canadian Avril Lavigne. But when her ride finally arrives, it's a van packed with amps and instruments. And it's being trailed by a jeepful of adoring coeds.

“There's these girls that are following us,” Tegan says excitedly. “They started three provinces back and they've seen eight shows now. They came in to see the two TV shows we just did. They've been with us for over a week and a half.”

When I mention that I too caught her and her twin sister and musical partner, Sara, on TV—last night, almost as soon as I'd bothered to switch on the tube—Tegan seems pleasantly surprised. She shouldn't be. Her band, Tegan and Sara, has built a Canadian following with five years of touring. And now, with the impressive U.S. college-radio debut of their sophomore album, If It Was You, they're poised to make noise here.

Tegan's less pleased to learn that I'd read the article announcing their upcoming Toronto show in the town's alt-weekly paper. “I hate it,” she says, referring to the piece. “It goes into ‘I was at their last show and there were these annoying lesbians in the front row....’ It's so offensive.” Though she doesn't act like a celebrity, Tegan Quin is well aware of her image. In fact, she's obsessed with it.

“Okay, can we stop talking about this?” eventually blurts Sara, sitting to her twin's left at the table. Sara, who by this time I've already dubbed the Shy One, has stayed silent through much of the conversation, opting instead to crunch the ice cubes in her ginger ale, chew on her straw, and stare blankly out into the falling flakes. But the thought of another go-round about Tegan and Sara's public profile riles her; they've been down this road before. Though Sara, with her close-cropped, dark-dyed ‘do and paler skin, boasts more chic than her sister, they share the same crystalline eyes, perfect, angular cheek-bones, and sexual preference. They are also both undeniably cute—hot, even. Hot. Lesbian. Twin. Rocker. Chicks. But they're not interested in anybody's Howard Stern-style fantasies, or any other labels you can muster, mister.

 

>> TEGAN AND SARA QUIN have been playing music and touring since they were in high school. From the beginning, they drew comparisons to Ani DiFranco—comparisons that, as regards their first commercial album, 2000's This Business of Art, and its aggressive acoustic-folk-rock manifestos, are sonically accurate. Still, the two—who share writing, singing, and guitar-playing duties about equally—insist they are more a musical product of their '80s-era upbringing than disciples of any one individual.

“Some of our biggest influences when we were kids [were] people like Bruce Springsteen and U2,” says Sara. “Just people who write songs that have a pop sensibility, but there's definitely a rock element; they're simple, they're hooky.”

“We loved Corey Hart,” admits Tegan.

“Yeah, we did love Corey Hart,” echoes Sara.

If It Was You, released in the States in August on legendary rock risk-taker Neil Young's Vapor Records, definitely reflects the girls' gravitation toward a more pop sound. Produced by John Collins and David Carswell (the New Pornographers, the Smugglers), it spans a wider spectrum than its predecessor, with less growling, DiFranco-philic angst and more strolling, wistful sing-alongs in the vein of the Go-Go's or Velocity Girl.

Despite having a reasonably high profile in their homeland, Tegan and Sara insist that Canadian radio has no room for them. “What are you going to do, slip us in between Nickelback and No Doubt?” laughs Tegan. South of the border, however, where there are multiple radio formats and high-wattage college stations, “I Hear Noises,” the raging first single off If It Was You, has done admirably. “We peaked at number 21 on the college charts,” Tegan says. “We were so excited; we were hoping for a top 50.”

Elliot Roberts, Neil Young's manager, cofounder of Vapor, and the one who signed the girls at the tender age of 18, is confident that this is only the beginning. “We really believe that they're going to grow and get better every year,” says Roberts. “We expect them to be major artists.”

Tegan offers a more modest appraisal: “I think we're better than average. [With] music alone, I don't think we stand out that much, but it's our personalities, our live show, and our whole dynamic that raises us above the rest.”

There's just one problem. “We're not pushing those angles," she says.

>> HANG AROUND TEGAN and Sara long enough and you'll notice an odd ambivalence, a peculiar unwillingness to acknowledge or assist in their own starward trajectory. At first it comes off as youthful stubbornness. (“Photo shoots, I hate them!” Sara rants. “We don't like to be told what to do.”) Then, as a reflexive refusal to use their gayness as marketing fodder. (“You don't ever read an article with Radiohead and hear Thom Yorke talking about his sexuality,” Tegan says.) But when Tegan waxes nostalgic about how casually her “hippie” parents—Sonia Clement, a therapist, and Stephen Quin, a housing developer—first received news of their teenage girls' sexual choices, Tegan and Sara's nonchalance starts to make sense.

“It was such a nonissue,” recalls Tegan. “It was just like, ‘I met someone’”—a woman— “and everyone was like, ‘Oh, cool.’” There's a powerful sense, for both Tegan and Sara, that sexual preference should not obscure, let alone define, their music and image. Besides, Tegan adds with a laugh, “I figure it's better if people think we're single. Maybe then all the boys will like us more.”

Thgan and Sara do want people to like them, but for the right reasons, which, typically, they articulate in sentences that run over each other like runts in a litter. “We did an interview the other day,” Tegan begins. “The guy said that when he saw Avril Lavigne happening, he thought, Tegan and Sara are finally going to be huge. Finally, there's this music with a person behind it, with an open mind, and being bratty, and dressing how you want. He was like, ‘Do you think you're going to be huge?’ And we were like, ‘We don't care!’”

“If we wanted to sell tons of records and work the image thing,” she continues, “we could make it work. We could sell a million records. We could…”

“But what we're doing,” says Sara, “what we're already in the middle of, what we've already established, is a career. We've been doing this long enough at a grassroots level that…”

“We don't have to blow up,” Tegan jumps in. “If we keep climbing…”

“...naturally…” adds Sara.

“...we will get to the top.”

>> WHATEVER THE TOP MAY be in their collective mind, Tegan and Sara are off to a decent start. So far, they've appeared on Letterman and several Canadian talk shows. They've toured the States and/or Europe with Neil Young, Rufus Wainwright, Joan Osborne, and, oddly enough, both Ryan and Bryan Adams. Of all, Ryan Adams, who personally requested that the twin Quins open for him on his most recent tour (and, of course, developed a crush on Sara), was the most “cool.” “He treated us like equals,” says Tegan. “Whereas with some of the tours there was certainly no, like, ‘Hey Neil!’ You know, busting in [like] ‘Can I borrow a pair of your socks?””

Tonight, the girls play Toronto’s Lee's Palace, one of the last remaining stops on their own Born in the Eighties Tour. The room is packed, and, yes, there are a bunch of lesbians in the front row. Tegan and Sara's personal “super-fans”—the girls from the jeep—are ricocheting off the walls in anticipation. “They let us hang out at sound checks,” gushes a 21-year-old college student with a boyish haircut who, along with her three friends, has been skipping school to catch the bulk of the tour. “It's like we're part of the team.”

Tegan and Sara open the show with the ear-grabbing guitar stabs of “Time Running,” and the boys enjoy it as much as the girls. The twins and their band—Chris Carlson, the bassist, and Rob Chursinoff, the drummer—rip through a couple more songs before Sara finally speaks up. With blue stage lights playing on her small frame and Elven features, she looks almost Tolkien-esque, a punk-rock Arwen.

“I was in Halifax,” she begins, peeking out from under her blackened bangs. “I think I picked up some sort of virus in Halifax and it's in my mouth.” The audience giggles, a little uncomfortably. “But I don't think it's contagious because I make out with everyone in the band and no one else has it.”

See? Hot. ■ 

Backtracking

THIS BUSINESS OF ART (Vapor, 2000) Concentrated teen anxiety (ya know—dating, resisting, and general emotional confusion) spat, scat, and yelped over pummeling folk riffs. DiFranco-lite, with heart. B-

IF IT WAS YOU (Vapor/Sanctuary, 2002) The girls buy an electric guitar and let loose. Less dense, less uptight, and way more varied. If is filled with sweet, subtle tunes and delicious, radio-ready hooks. A