by Zoë Gorman
Photo credit: Lindsey Byrnes
Amidst enormous cheering, twin-sister indie-pop duo Tegan
and Sara brought an intense stage presence, powerful vocals, and a seamless set
to the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, New Jersey, on Friday.
Tegan rocked a fringed, flowing asymmetrical hairstyle, while Sara
struck rigid poses and appeared to have an intense relationship with her microphone.
Often without pausing between energetic numbers, the Canadian duo kept up a
constant hype. They mixed old-time classics, such as "The Con" and "Walking with
the Ghost," from a 13-year career with new hits off their most recent album,
Heartthrob.
Many songs reached a myriad of emotional layers associated
with a breakup by staying upbeat and incorporating punchy vocals against softer
backgrounds. Live synths made the melodies more intricate and the sound more
polished, but Tegan and Sara also paid homage to their roots as an
acoustic duo during the concert’s encore, when they performed a few songs
without the rest of the band. The crowd—composed mostly of alternatively dressed
women in their 20s—cheered wildly throughout.
"We’ve been on tour all summer with Fun., but there's nothing
like playing in front of people who know who you are," the group announced a
few songs into Friday's set.
The band balanced catchy, well-constructed riffs with a nice
interspersing of vocals. The newer numbers, such as "I Was a Fool," developed a more contoured set of
melody lines that made for effective builds into and through the choruses. The most
recent album also tends to steer clear of incessant, whiny vocals or redundant
lyrics that have limited the group's appeal in the past; rather, vocal
techniques are used to highlight particularly emotional sections or words. On Friday, the group came out strong performing songs from five of its seven albums,
though they appeared to be rushing a bit on old favorites such as "Where Did the
Good Go."
Tegan and Sara closed the main part of the concert with "Closer," which achieved certified-platinum status in Canada
and reached number one on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs earlier this year. Synthesizer
arpeggios, pounding bass drums, fast-paced rhymes, and steady build to a
wailing two-part vocal chorus make this song essentially pop. In concert, the
duo brought out an upward vocal inflexion at the end of each line of the verse
for a signature quality.
Willie Nile, who opened for Tegan and Sara, said in an
interview after the show that he was excited to see the duo's hard work pay off
over the years. The folk-rocker and his motorcycle-dude entourage kept the
audience jumping with active riffs and strong chord progressions, albeit
pounding material and short, repeated phrases occupied most of the songs.
The first opening act, Plastiq Passion, fit the venue better as an
empowering grrl-rock group with potential for enormous indie appeal. Catchy and tuneful vocals, superb use of toms to build momentum into choruses, well-coordinated instrumental breaks, and cool, indie guitar riffs (one suspiciously
resembling Grouplove’s "Tounge Tied") were this young group's recipe for
success. The band mixed singing, sultry bass lines with racing guitar tab on
hit numbers such as "Tragic" and "Angel." Vocals in the lower register could
use a little more punch, but overall this group brought all of the soul of hard
rock with all the innovation of indie.
Photo credit: David Rodberg
Plastiq Passion, which previously opened for The Misfits, uses a
collaborative approach to writing its songs that builds off ideas from lead
singer Jessica Chaos.
"You have to really embrace the idea that [the songs are]
not going to be entirely yours anymore," Chaos said in an interview. "There's a
lot of compromise."
Tegan and Sara finished their East Coast shows on the Today Show and will be touring internationally starting next month,
but Plastiq Passion is slated to play a cancer benefit concert at Mother
Pug's Saloon in Staten Island on October 19.