- What were you doing during the “difficult” years of early to mid-adolescence? Leaving aside current sixteen-year-old climate emergency activists and diverse in gender and sexuality teenage campaigners, most people would have been mired in the swirling thoughts of, “Nobody likes me at all”, “I’m a weirdo”, “My parents don’t understand me” and “Won’t someone HELP me?!”. Some would have set down those thoughts on paper, writing a journal, poetry, or song lyrics. Canada’s pop-rock Quin twins, Tegan And Sara, were in that latter category, committing to cassette tape several songs that catalogued their teenage years of self-discovery, finding empowerment and progressing to adulthood. Working on a memoir, High School brought these cassette tapes to light and earlier this year the sisters reworked some of the lyrics and musical arrangements with a view to releasing an album that, as they said, “….we never could have made as teenagers, full of songs we never could have written as adults.”
Putting aside the first thought that these twelve songs could be full of embarrassingly twee lyrics, unpacking crucial moments of teenage angst that years later would be mortifying to examine, Tegan And Sara have managed to keep the essence of what they were thinking and feeling as teenagers combining it with some quality musical arrangements and production. A good deal of that success is down to their choice of collaborator on the project, Australian ARIA and APRA award winning producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Alexandra Robotham, known professionally as Alex Hope. It is an inspired choice, and the album is an important statement of female empowerment in an industry that is woefully unbalanced in terms of gender representation. This is the first Tegan and Sara album that is produced, performed, engineered, mixed, and mastered by a team of people who identify as female.
Previously the Quins had their two biggest successes working with American Grammy winning producer Greg Kurstin on Heartthrob and Love You To Death. It was said at the time that these albums explored territory that was somewhat alienating to their “original” fans. Their first six albums followed a rockier pop/punk vibe and eschewed the polished pop that is Kurstin’s stock in trade. Undeniably, going into a more accessible pop world raised their profile immensely and gave the queer community a rare set of female icons as cultural leaders. Hey, I’m Just Like You doesn’t totally lose that gleaming pop sound. It’s certainly more guitar based than the previous two albums, but the harmonies of the twins are there, the layering of keyboard sounds trips through song after song, and there are some beautiful catchy hooks. I Don’t Owe You Anything, I’m Not The Only One and the title track are just three examples.
All the songs fit neatly into the three-minute-pop-song format, showing that you don’t need five or six minutes to tell the world how you feel (not that there’s anything wrong with that, just that a pop song is best offered simply and in an uncomplicated fashion).
It’s certainly brave for Tegan And Sara to share their teenage thoughts with the world, even as it shows -under the pop polish- adolescents can have some really worthwhile things to say. Remembering the power of being young, Hey, I'm Just Like You is, in a way, a ringing endorsement of the world’s current crop of teenagers, as they ably demonstrate just how capable they are of well-considered thoughts and actions. If we leave them a functioning planet, youth just might save the future.
- Blair Martin.