Album Review: Tegan & Sara--Heartthrob

I won’t treat you like you’re typical.

This is a lyric from Tegan & Sara’s headline song (“Closer”) off their new album titled Heartthrob. Before I heard their new album I thought of Tegan & Sara as a catchy folk-pop duo with a gimmick. That may sound negative, but I’m truly a fan of the Canadian twin sisters and that’s especially true of their 2007 album The Con. I have mostly all of their albums on my iPod and I still appreciate the nuance in which they combine folk and modern indie. The Con was engulfed with guest performers that made the album very good and catchy. The drums were preformed by Jason McGerr of Death Cab for Cutie and in my opinion make the album whole. My favorite song of the album is “Floorplan” for the great combination of light drumming and fast acoustic guitar; the song just captures the soul of the album perfectly.

I know this is not a review of The Con album, but I just wanted to give context to why I was disappointed with the new album. Folk-pop, pop-folk, indie folk, or whatever you call it has really caught fire the past few years with bands like Of Monsters and Men, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, and Mumford & Sons so I was patiently waiting for Tegan & Sara’s new album because I assumed that this was their bread and butter. When I heard “Closer” before the album was released I was a little confused to why it was a straight pop song. I told myself the record company probably released that song to catch mainstream radio, but I was wrong. Every single song on the album is exactly in the genre of mainstream pop without a hint of the acoustic drug I hold dear.

When I first heard this song I was like: “This song sounds like it should be playing during a women’s spin class.” I wasn’t surprised when I looked up producers for the Heartthrob album and saw they mostly hail from hip-hop and electronic genres. This venture into highly produced pop is not new for Tegan & Sara because they did do a song with Tiesto called “Feel It In My Bones,” but I thought I would end with guest spots and not a whole album. I would have been okay with a combo pop and folk album because they do it very well, but this album had no soul to it. Every song sounded like the one before and I couldn’t wait for the album to be done with. Skip buying the album on iTunes and stick to listening to it on spotify. But do yourself a favor and buy The Con on iTunes. Now I must wait for another few years and hope they go back to the folk-pop they got me hooked on. GRADE: 4.5/10