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SO JEALOUS
(VAPOR/UNIVERSAL)
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Tegan and Sara are cute punk-pop twentysomething lesbian identical twins from Canada. Beyond the obvious freak factor, there’s plenty of substance on their new CD on Neil Young’s Universal imprint Vapor. Fanning the ashes of the riot grrrl movement by infusing catchy folk-pop hooks with crunchy noise, they amalgamate the fun folk of Ani Difranco, the jumpy-poppiness of Gwen Stefani, and the melodic messiness of the Breeders. Their two first releases, 1999’s Under Feet like Ours (self-released) and 2000’s This Business of Art (Vapor), showed promise of continuing the Ani dream, but the duo’s modish previous CD, 2002’s If It Was You (Vapor), found them expanding their musical horizons. On So Jealous, Tegan and Sara share production chores with New Pornographers producers John Collins and David Carswell, who also produced If It Was You. The results range from the eerie "Walking with the Ghost" to the furious "So Jealous" to the Strokes-like "We Didn’t Do It." On the opening "You Wouldn’t Like Me," Tegan’s "I feel like/I wouldn’t like me/If I met me" has the honesty of a diary entry. And the song’s woe-is-me lyrics frame a souped-up ’80s new-wave guitar-rocker so effectively that it’s almost worth coining a new term — emo grrrl — for the direction Tegan and Sara appear to be headed.
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