The Best “Con” of the Year Yet

Kathy Chan

Listening to the new Tegan and Sara record, it seems The Con is a bit like rummaging through a pile of heart-numbing love letters and reading someone’s diary. It’s at times troubling yet rather comforting to engage in a record so deeply, where it almost seems as if the musicians knew exactly every thought that will grace your mind at one point or another. After a thorough listen to the sisters’ fifth album, the sensation that a bond, forged by the emotions of heartache, anxiety, grief, uncertainty, and aging, had connected me to the set of Calgary-born twins.

After taking almost a year and a half off after their release of So Jealous in 2004, the sisters lived two different lives, stretching from Vancouver to Montreal, in an attempt to miss one another and to focus on fresh songwriting. Separately, they write and create, but once together, they produce an album that ultimately works. The Con is an easy distinction between the two sisters. Tegan, fresh from the trappings of a five-year relationship, offers songs that have a darker, louder, more heart-wrenching feel. Sara, being in a long-term, stable relationship, deals with the issues of life, death, and adulthood, and the responsibilities that come with these. 

Fourteen tracks, with the entire album clocking in at approximately thirty-six minutes, it almost feels like a journey through a friend’s significant life story. The pro to this “con” is an absolutely stellar album. The plus side to the darker sides of life’s turmoil is the recovery process, making The Con an absolute A+ remedy.