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Live Show Review: Tegan & Sara

Against a stark backdrop of three looming tree stumps, Canadian identical twin pop-rock group Tegan & Sara took the stage on Friday July 26th at the gorgeous jewel-box theater at the Malibu Performing Arts Center. The girls are notoriously chatty performers and their fans notoriously rabid enthusiasts—neither disappointed.

After announcing they would play their new excellent new album, The Con (read our review), in its entirety, the pair (backed by their supporting band of three dudes) launched into the Tegan-led ballad "Call It Off," and the night seemed poised for an emo-tinged love-in as adoring fans hung on the girls' every harmony.

Instead, after the close of the opening song, cries of "You're so hot!!" rang out from the crowd (the rowdy stage-right group that Sara later mused had been fed crack before the show), and a discussion of Tegan's jumpsuit and its relative sexiness ensued. She modeled it from various angles, and Sara commenced a discussion of the experience of getting cat-called, which became a theme for the stage banter throughout the evening.

Though the twins were born only eight minutes apart, a clear older-younger sister dynamic quickly emerged as Sara (the youngest) soaked up the limelight, telling hilarious anecdotes between nearly every song, whilst Tegan indulged her and looked (lovingly) exasperated by her sister's inability to shut up.

But Sara wasn't to be stopped. She went on much to the audience's delight about topics ranging from her love of animals and children (not to be construed as creepy in any way), to what it was like growing up the daughter of a MILF, to how "Knife Going In" was written for her dead grandmother, but she probably wouldn't like it (she always thought Tegan & Sara would be much more successful as a country act).

When they got to the album's first track, "I Was Married" (they played the album in reverse order), Sara introduced it by saying it was about gay marriage and going on to mention how it had been inspired by a moment when she had gotten drunk and almost got married. By accident? It wasn't quite clear. Tegan commented wryly, "When you introduce that song, you undo all the good that you did by writing it."

Funnily enough, though the momentum of hearing the whole album in full was sometimes dampened by the girls' chattiness, once they moved into playing classics from a variety of their previous albums, it was all business and they built an energy in the room with the now crushed-out crowd, ending with a thoroughly rockin' and affecting version of the title track from their previous record, "So Jealous."

You can check photos from the show here.

—Jocelyn K. Glei
07.30.07