Live: Tegan and Sara

Tegan and Sara have been one of my very favorite bands ever since one (relatively) chilly September day when I innocently picked up If It Was You while out buying Bangs’ Call and Response (god, I miss Bangs). To say that I fell hard for them would be an understatement. I was taken in initially by “Living Room” (which remains my favorite Tegan and Sara song to this day) and “And Darling (This Thing That Breaks My Heart)” – which was, endearingly, recorded at Tegan’s house, separately from the rest of the record. My adoration of them grew with every album – their songs are always pitch perfect and totally relevant and now I’m getting off of the subject, which is the gig that they played at my favorite venue on Sunday night.

They rarely come to Florida, and they hadn’t been to Tampa before this so it was kind of a capital E EVENT for me (why I’d never seen them while traveling, I have no idea). I took my friend Bri along with me, and although she is relatively new to their music, she was similarly affected and now has an enormous crush on Sara (whereas I have to admit that I’m more Tegan-centric when pressed to choose).

Their opening acts, Steel Train and Holly Miranda (from The Jealous Girlfriends – I’m a big fan) provided solid support, and had the crowd whipped into a frenzy early on, which only (naturally) increased when Tegan and Sara took the stage.

Launching into Sainthood‘s “The Ocean” to start, they played a solid mix of songs from all of their albums throughout the night. Standouts for me were the poppy, piano driven “Alligator” (which features a dead sexy bassline), “Soil, Soil” with its jumble of lyrics and melody spilling into one another making the impact of this short song as strong as any of the longer numbers (I feel like a fool / So I’m going to stop troubling you / Buried in my yard / A letter to send to you / And if I forget / Or god forbid die too soon / Hope that you’ll hear me / Know that I wrote to you), and The Con‘s anthemic, beautifully layered “Nineteen”.

They closed the set with “You Wouldn’t Like Me,” then quickly bounced as the stage was prepped for their encore. I was completely stoked when the tech set up a glockenspiel, because I had the feeling that I knew what was coming. Starting with “Back In Your Head,” then segueing into an amazing, brilliant, gorgeous acoustic version of their Tiesto collaboration “Feel It In My Bones” (one of my favorite numbers of the night), and moving to the earnest “My Number,” then the pleading “Call It Off” before finally ending the night by taking it back to their early days with my favorite song, “Living Room” (which I’d been silently pleading for all night, if I’m honest), well. As encores go, this one was unutterable perfection.

The video below is an audience capture of one of my very favorites, “Call It Off”, a song that Tegan wrote when she was, in her own words, “soooo depressed”. It features some of the most poignant lyrics in their extensive catalog (Maybe I would have been something you’d be good at / Maybe you would have been something I’d be good at), and beautifully describes the heartbreak and confusion of unrequited love.

The video quality is about what you’d expect, but the sound is great, the banter is perfect (in fact, the banter was one of the best parts of the evening, featuring Tegan spotting a “Boobs” hat in the audience, and Sara admitting that if she met most of the kids in attendance at a party that she would “hide behind a bookcase or something”). Also, the audience participation is really sweet (and surprisingly in tune with the singing); it was my favorite part of the evening, and is the perfect illustration of a fucking awesome show.

Photo credit Tracy May for Creative Loafing.