Tegan and Sara
If It Was You
(Vapor Records, 2002)

When Tegan and Sara released their 2007 album The Con, it was greeted by fans and critics alike as a bold departure from their previous work. This album was vivid, it was emotional, and its roots were blatantly planted in pop. In the context of public perception, it was an unforeseen move. Until The Con, Tegan and Sara couldn’t seem to separate themselves from basic descriptions: “Twin sisters,” “lesbians,” “witty,” “quirky,” and any number of adjectives that pointed to what Pitchfork’s review of The Con eventually called out as “tampon rock.” After The Con, it was tampon rock no more for the (lesbian) (quirky) Quin sisters.

In reality, The Con was a long time coming for a band whose humble beginnings kicked off in 1999 with the self-released Under Feet Like Ours. Both this debut and its Vapor Records follow-up, This Business of Art, bore an inescapable and mildly uncomfortable resemblance to the plucky acoustic style made famous by Ani DiFranco. Still, there was something unique about Tegan and Sara’s style of song, a certain musical sensibility that made songs like the mostly repetitive “Superstar” compelling.

That unique component found its way to the surface on If It Was You. Over the course of 40 minutes, Tegan and Sara bring to life all of the unique neuroses that mark the modern human condition. While 2008’s breed of female singer-songwriters are familiar with framing relationships in witty, biting lyrics (as perfected by Lily Allen and Kate Nash), Tegan and Sara were creating their own field of view in 2002. The album opens with an admission that contextualizes every song that follows: A rumble of guitar, the knock of drums, and then “I could see you 10 or 12 times a day / I think it’s best we do it your therapist’s way.”

It’s a somewhat cheeky and uncomfortable beginning, but this is what Tegan and Sara do best. Against a backdrop of hook-filled, upbeat guitar pop, a world of hurt, insecurity, mischief, and boredom unfolds. There’s no real trickery in these songs, but rather a feeling that this is how human interaction often feels: Blunt phrases cushioned in catchy packages. On “Monday, Monday, Monday”, Tegan and Sara liken the end of a relationship to everyone’s least favorite workday. It’s not the twists of the lyrical tongue that are shocking here, but the kind of self-honesty that is rarely conveyed in life or in music. “I make myself unhappy so you’ll go,” the song admits to a significant other only after the leaving has already occurred.

Later, on “City Girl”, Tegan wraps up a world of social anxiety in one succinct line: “I get so city girl on you.” It’s clear in each of these songs that the heart of If It Was You lies in its ability to capture the human condition without an abundance of emotion. The truth is that we get scared, we freak out for no reason, and we run away. We are imperfect creatures, and sometimes we even spy on our neighbors. Here, Tegan and Sara make all of that palatable with strong harmonies, basic guitar melodies, and the occasional well-placed banjo solo.

With the addition of a heady dose of keyboards and an infusion of family history, this brand of storytelling is what makes last year’s The Con the refreshing, clever listen that it is. It is undeniably pop, but it’s pop with its feet firmly planted in the foundation that began in If It Was You, and continued through its follow-up So Jealous. Strangely, what those keyboards managed to do was liberate Tegan and Sara from the constraints of the social environment they’d been capturing in song for years.

The Vapor Records reissue of If It Was You adds a bonus track, “Come On Kids”, that invites celebration even as it mocks itself. More importantly, it paints a vivid picture of what Tegan and Sara have to offer the musical landscape, how dramatically that picture has changed from the band’s inception, and how consistent their work has been in the last six years. If the added bonus is that the arrival of The Con has freed the band from the term “tampon rock,” then so much the better.

Watch: “Monday, Monday, Monday” [at youtube.com]

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