Tegan & Sara at The Granada

Tegan and Sara

Better than: “The Next Great American Band”

Review and Photos by Richard Gintowt

Tegan & Sara are twin sisters from Calgary (ya know, up there in Canada, eh?) who part their mullets the same way and play in a band together. They’re a bit punk, a bit folk, and a whole lotta pop. There’s nothing too deep or compelling about their music, but it’s likable enough and seems to have hit its stride with a new album called The Con (partly due, perhaps, to the contributions of Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla and The Rentals’ Matt Sharp).

Unfortunately, Tegan & Sara have awful taste in music, or at least that’s the impression they gave off by choosing Northern State as their opening act. Coming off like a third-rate Beastie Girls, the tribe of female MCs (perhaps too kind a word) unleashed groan-a-minute couplets like I’m Hester Prynne / Let me begin and introduced the apathetic crowd to lame slang words like “cha’ll” (as in “if it’s alright wit’ cha’ll”). If Northern State’s goal was to pump up the crowd, it worked – I was totally psyched when they left the stage and T&S started setting up.