Tegan and Sara’s seventh studio album, “Heartthrob,” brings an entirely new crop of indie-pop, post-break-up tunes.
Throughout the years the pair has evolved from making grungy folk rock rooted in the likes of Smashing Pumpkins into a synthy, pop duo with buzzing electronics and tinkering percussion reminiscent of 80s new wave (no surprise there, being influenced by the likes of Joey McIntyre, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper)
Fifteen years after their humble yet astounding beginnings with records such as “This Business of Art” and nine years after their first hit in 2004, “Walking With a Ghost,” the duo developed its hormone-ridden lyrics and lo-fi electric guitars played without straps into a glossy, radio-ready sound. “Heartthrob” is no exception to their ever-enveloping style.
“Heartthrob,” a ten-track album, displays a range of musical and lyrical extremes. “I Couldn’t Be Your Friend” epitomizes a class-act break-up song counterbalanced with electronic beats while “Now I’m All Messed Up” combines muffled keyboarding with drum machines and synths. The duo manages to combine vibrant elements of synth pop with its signature quirky, indie-rock. The aesthetic and common thread of the album, and their musical career generally, is the use of raw, honest and somewhat juvenile lyrics. The album art, always an essential and notable quality in Tegan and Sara’s records, depicts the duo on deteriorating posters in pastel colors on a teenage bedroom wall. The metaphor is clear. Heartthrob cohesively is about teenage years and the fading, once prominent, emotions from that time.
The album is, however, patently removed from their work in the past. It’s an overt leap into the mainstream. Tegan and Sara’s 2009 album, Sainthood, began to catapult the pair into the limelight, gaining attention from Tiesto who collaborated with the band in 2009 with the song “Feel it in My Bones.” In 2012, Tegan and Sara collaborated with Morgan Page on “Body Work,” a hyper-electronic track released shortly before Heartthrob dropped.
“Heartthrob,” Tegan and Sara’s most radio-friendly curation of work, will surely bring the band into the mainstream. With their single “Closer,” a thoroughly danceable and undeniably catchy track, being blared on pop radio stations, Tegan and Sara have evolved into the ranks of the radio-reigning.
