six months and counting, while Sara is approaching the six-year mark with her girlfriend—but also their connection with each other and the rough patches they’ve endured over the years. “The title Love You To Death is a play on [the wed-
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behind the most recent clip, 100x. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is,”
Tegan explains, “because it feels like in the past we had been like, ‘diversity, enough of misogyny, sexism and homophobia in the industry!’ and then we’re hiring white, heterosexual males all the time. So, it was like, if we’re going to do a video for every song, we should try to collaborate with artists like Jess Rona.”
Relationships, and the way they have power to
either cripple, transform, or both, is the overriding theme of Love You To Death. Not just relationships with girlfriends—Tegan has been going steady for
ding vow] ‘till death do we part,’” Tegan elaborates. “The idea not only of being bound to each other because we’re identical twins and have the same face, but also we’ve chosen this career path and there are a lot of struggles that come along with that. We’ve come through it and have this amazing life and career, but had to get through a lot of bullshit to get to that.” By chance have they ever pretended to be each
other to prank their respective girlfriends? “No,” Tegan insists, “because I don’t think we ever truly believed in our twin-ness. I think especially the last few years we are so different-looking. We never got away with any of that stuff. In photos, we have to play up how much we’re similar, but if you spend more than thirty seconds with us you’re like okay, I get it, you’re different people.” Tegan and Sara’s relationship with their fans has
also stirred up complicated feelings over the past few years: as evident from their Facebook page’s comments, some votaries have been jarred by the way they’ve evolved musically. When Tegan and Sara’s first release on a label, This Business of Art, came out in 2000, their music had a guitar-driven, Indigo Girls-meets-Le Tigre indie sound. Over the years and six more albums, the guitars were increasingly supplemented by synths. When 2013’s Heartthrob came around—which featured the Billboard #1 Hot Dance Club Song “Closer”—they enlisted producer Greg Kurstin (who brought us Adele’s “Hello”) and became a downright synth-driven outfit with irresistible hooks and zeitgeist appeal. “We grew up listening to Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Depeche Mode and New Order,” Tegan shares, “so, I think a lot of our influences are just starting to come out. There has definitely been a focus on the fact we don’t play the guitar as much, but we’re both classically trained piano players; we started playing at five and stopped when we were sixteen, so moving towards keyboards we were secretly like, ‘Yes!’” In September, Tegan and Sara embark on a three-month tour of the USA, which includes a stop at Asheville, North Carolina’s Orange Peel in No- vember. While a famously progressive city, some would say the Portland of the Southeast, Asheville has nonetheless suffered in the controversies and boycotts resulting from the state’s reprehensible
HB2 bill which dictates that men and women must use the restroom corresponding with their birth certificate gender - Maroon 5 recently pulled their NC concert dates in protest. The pair has kept an eye and ear on this disturbing
wave of transphobia and will be donating a dollar from every tour ticket to charitable organizations with a focus on transgender rights and protections. Asked if they would cancel their date as well, Tegan says they discussed the issue and found more value in providing a safe space and bit of joy for the local LGBT community and allies. “I remember in Croatia and Zagreb there was
a vote about recognizing LGBT people as equal citizens and people were extremely emotional and amped up about it,” she recalls. “Our show there did really well, we sold way more tickets than we thought we would considering it was our first time there and afterwards a lot of the press and media told us it was because they positioned our show as a sort of meeting up place [for gays and allies]. We really take for granted how much things have changed for us in places like Canada, but not for everyone around the world.” Getting back to the album, one aspect of relationships not addressed onLove You To Death is whether either of the twins has a predilection for chick magnets; the type of girl who makes them beat off competitors with a bat when out in public. What does it take to win the eyes or heart of Tegan and Sara, anyway? “Our girlfriends are very different,” Tegan laughs, “and we always dated very different people. We have different tastes in women. The person I’m dating is a total babe. I constantly find myself out and I’ll see her but don’t know it’s her and check her out and be, like, ‘Oh my god, that’s the girl I’m dating!’ And, I think Sara’s partner is wonderful, she’s a total babe and so smart and so ambitious and hilarious. But, we both date pretty private people. That’s the price to pay for dating Tegan or Sara. You’ve got to lock down your life. Our fans are hungry for details and we’ve been hacked a few times and had breaches of privacy. When you enter our closed circle, even the people who work for us, it’s like, ‘Okay everything goes private; you can’t post anything about where we are or what we’re doing, no photos of us with you.’ It’s not that fun, honestly. We’re not a good time.”
Love You To Death is set to be released Friday, June 3. For tour dates also beginning in June, or more information on Tegan and Sara, go
toteganandsara.com.
JUNE 2016 | RAGE monthly 25
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