This week, Tegan & Sara launched their fifth record “The Con”. Tegan & Sara is a band from Calgary who got their first big break by winning a local music competition (Garage Warz). The identical twins’ trademark is their equal share of lead singing and playing of instruments.

I first came across their music a couple years ago on the soundtrack of Grey’s Anatomy. They sure seemed to love this band as I’m sure at least three of their songs are on the soundtrack. I wasn’t sure at first. I wasn’t hooked right away. But then a couple weeks ago, I was listening to podcast #111 and Grant Lawrence was interviewing them. They were so cool, smart and interesting. And then they played a song off their new album, and I was hooked! I’ve been listening to it back to back for a couple days now. I love it. So good. And more importantly, they’re Canadian!

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Entendu à Montréal.
I’m sorry for those of you who won’t be able to understand this page. So terribly sorry because this website is so hilarious. It’s a bunch of stuff that people hear around Montreal. Stupid things mostly. Unbelievably dense and mind boggling things. It’s so real and so great.
Enjoy

Here’s a couple examples:
Intercom: *Prochaine station, Jean-Drapeau*
Gars saoul : L’as-tu entendue celle-là ?
Fille encore plus saoule : Certain ! ‘À doit être écoeurée de répéter ça à tout ‘é stations ! En plus, ‘à se force pour parler neutre ! ‘À devrait faire enregistrer sa voix, ça lui sauverait
d’la job !

Un touriste américain septuagénaire à la préposée à la réception d’un hôtel :
- Je vais passer la journée à Québec, dois-je apporter mon passeport?
- Vous devriez avoir quelques cartes d’identité sur vous, mais je vous conseille de laisser votre passeport ici.
- Donc je n’aurai pas besoin de passeport pour passer la frontière?
- La frontière??
- Oui. J’ai entendu à la télé que Québec voulait se séparer du Canada.

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Yesterday I was hanging out and thinking about a conversation I had with a friend of mine a couple weeks ago about The Dears. I was talking about disappointments in new albums of bands I love, which were released this past year. He told me to give him an example and I said The Dears. Gang of Losers was pretty disappointing to me, but John, he jumped off his chair when I said that as though I would’ve insulted his own work. I felt bad but couldn’t take my words back. I was horribly disappointed by Gang of Losers. I listened to it a couple dozen times and then was sick sick sick of it. I felt it lacked an edge that the other albums had. Something mildly aggressive and cynical. Maybe the new one was a little too sappy for me. But I stick to my words, it was a big letdown for me. It has it’s qualities, and it’s good enough, but I expected so much more. John then explained to me that it’s normal for a band to release less exciting stuff after they have produced such masterpieces as No Cities Left. I understood, but felt it was a cheap excuse for something important being lost.

But yesterday, I pulled out my old Dears albums (No Cities Left, End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story, and Thank You Good Night Sold Out). Last year I remember listening to these albums incessantly. It’s basically all I listened to all last summer. I got me through quitting smoking and working in a law-firm. These sounds hold very vivid memories for me. I also went to see them live at the Metropolis during the Jazz festival and it was seriously one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen. While some shows have a hard time getting on the excitement wagon, this one sits at the peak of Mount Amazing-and-Memorable-Shows-I’ve-Seen.

So, I pulled out the albums yesterday. Haven’t listened to them in almost a year and I wondered why. Why? Because of Gang of Losers. Gang of Losers came out, I listened to it for 2 weeks and then dropped them completely. I’m glad though, because now I go back to this and realize what a masterpiece No Cities Left truly is. That album is blissful musical pleasure from beginning to end. Which brings me to my point: I had to reconsider John’s argument about the masterpiece. Like, what was I expecting after No Cities Left? Another one just like it? Because if I was, I might as well sit there and listen to No Cities Left forever until my head explodes because bands don’t usually release the same album twice in a row. And especially great and magnificent bands. Great and magnificent bands evolve and that means change. Change is sometimes for the best and sometimes not. But I guess it’s like trying to fall in love with someone else when you’re already head over heels for someone else. When you’ve found the one, you stop looking because everything else seems so boring and irrelevant. So maybe No Cities Left was like heartbreakfully magnificent in a way. Maybe I wasn’t over No Cities Left. And now that I listen to it again, it’s all clear to me now, I so wasn’t over it. This album still touches me in a way that makes me want to stop the world from turning and spend a week in bed with it while ordering cheap take-out until my friends wonder if I’m still alive (reference Sex and the City when Carrie meets Aidan).
The Dears are just so great it gives me hope that maybe the next album will possibly be better than Gang of Losers. And it mends my heart a little bit to listen to their old albums and realize that, no, there is no such thing as a band who produces fantastic albums forever without the occasional flop. And it’s not a complete flop either, just lacks the hard cynical edge I so much adored in the other albums. But I guess that, as it is in love, you can’t constantly feel that way (cynical and heartbroken) or else you’re missing out. In that way, Gang of Losers is a logical evolution that steered in a different way, and was in a way necessary. And now that I listen to Gang of Losers afer having immersed myself into the old albums, I actually like it. It’s pretty good.

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