BLOGTOBER 2009: Music Reviews (20 of 22) Tegan and Sara, Sainthood

Hell - Tegan and Sara

Tegan and Sara MySpace Video

Tegan and Sara's latest, Sainthood, came out this week, and it's a mighty fine album. Above, the video for Hell. This song gives you a good idea of the hook driven nature of the whole album. The album is available to stream at myspace, so give it a listen.

It's an enjoyable album, one I think other reviewers are crediting with complexity and depth that isn't actually there. A song like On Directing is well written with a nice hook, but when I first heard it, my thought wasn't that is some groundbreakingly complex alterna-pop, my first thought was, this would be a lot more interesting if it were on the Selena Gomez album (and there are a lot more similarities with that album, and this one, than there are differences)

This whole album is well done current version art pop, that has a tendency to sound an awful lot like well done early 80s version art pop. Good thing I like early 80s art pop. The best summary I can think of for this album is that it's "art music for pop people", and it's "pop music for art people". What makes this album interesting is that there is no tension between those two states, it's both those things at the same time.