09.
Tegan And Sara
Sainthood

Not as instantly likeable or as enduring as their last album, 2007’s The Con, Sainthood is nonetheless an excellent record, which shows Canadian twins Tegan And Sara developing their sound further. To my ears, there’s an increased use of electronic sound here (sometimes in quite an 80s style), and also less of a poppy sheen – the album feels deliberately a bit more confrontational, both lyrically and musically. One if the advantages of Tegan And Sara is that they both write quite different styles of songs, which are then very complimentary and enhance each other’s effectiveness. That’s true again on Sainthood, and the tension between the more introspective slower tracks of Sara’s and the rockier faster songs that tend to be Tegan’s gives everything a great ebb and flow. It’s notable that the weakest track here is the one they wrote together (‘Paperback Head’). My pick on the album is the single, the excellent ‘Hell’ (which I think is written by Tegan), but there are no bad songs. Enough variety to always keep things interesting and a great ear for writing a pop song (combined with the inventiveness to make them not sound like pop songs) means that Sainthood is another quality release from a quality band.