INDIE POP
Tegan and Sara
THE CON
**
Bands experiment for a reason: Perhaps they’ve fallen into a rut, or are feeling pigeonholed by their label. And while musical experimentation can be enlightening, it finds Tegan and Sara’s The Con sorely disjointed. This severe departure from their successful folk-punk formula is exploration without any solid discovery. Gone is their concentration; gone is the complement of their collaboration. In its place is a musical tug-of-war that benefits neither Tegan nor Sara.
It’s not that this album has no positives; “Relief Next to Me” has an ominous sustain and crawling vocal intonations, while “Like O, Like H” showcases resonant storytelling with subversive, haunting music. But standouts are marred by a confusion of tracks that span from uninspired new wave (“Back in Your Head”) to radio-redundant post-emo (“Hop a Plane”) to a befuddling homage to Genesis (“Are You Ten Years Ago?”).
Independently, the songs aren’t bad, but collectively, it’s similar to being stuck in a car alongside a passenger who is fiddling with the radio dial for a half-hour: The album is nearly impossible to enjoy en masse. While this proves that Tegan and Sara have a knack for variety, it doesn’t say much for their sensibility.