Tegan and Sara have long been one of the most interesting pop music acts around. Their proclivity for searing honesty, paired with songs that balance up-to-date production techniques with good old-fashioned hooks has gained them a well-deserved enthusiastic following. Fans who are willing to follow a band no matter what sonic avenue they travel down are unique;
Tegan and Sara have paid theirs back by always remaining true to their core competencies no matter what. Whether taking a giant leap into the pop mainstream like they did on 2013's
Heartthrob or giving old songs an update on 2019's
Hey, I'm Just Like You, the duo's tight-knit harmonies, willingness to bare their souls, and very sticky melodies always remain intact. The same holds true on 2022's
Crybaby, an album that sticks close to a left-field pop template while also throwing in some tricky sonic curves and stripping away some of the mainstream gloss of recent releases. During the writing process, the sisters worked on each other's demos for the first time ever, leading to what might be their most collaborative album yet. The differentiation between the sister's songs is a little fuzzier this time around, which is really only important for those keeping score. What's truly important is that both sisters brought very strong, very emotionally powerful, super hooky songs to the album.
Crybaby rolls along like a fully colored, deeply shaded trip through the various aspects of pop music in the early 2022s. It jumps from angst-y, punky anthems ("Fucking Up What Matters") to rollicking pop full of yearning and pain ("Smoking Weed Alone'") sweetly sings through the heartache ("Faded Like a Feeling,") gets big and glossy ("Under My Control"), and swerves into jumpy new wave quirkiness ("I'm Okay.") Every song sounds like an alternate world hit single; a few of them are the equal of anything
T&S have done yet. "Pretty Shitty Time" is an amazing propulsive track that somehow turns having an awful time into a loop-filled, sad EDM banger; "I Can't Grow Up" is a mature take on punk-pop that folds in vocal effects, swaths of synths, and some truly impassioned vocals courtesy of
Tegan at her fieriest, and a classic
Sara ballad ("All I Wanted") that somehow makes a corny drum loop sound good. Must be the beauty of the melody and the restrained passion. Maybe the best song -- and one destined for a career-spanning greatest-hits set -- is "Yellow." It's a big and bold ballad, sort of a distant relative of
the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" but with very personal lyrics and the kind of chorus that sneaks back into your brain over and over for days, maybe even weeks. Like the rest of the record, it's mature music played with the energy and passion of youth, full of experience and tenderness but never complacent. It's no wonder that the duo have inspired so much devotion: They have never lost the inspiration behind their music and
Crybaby is one more shining example of that. ~ Tim Sendra