[thoughtful_salt]

Album:The Con
Artist:Tegan And Sara
Year Released:2007
Label:Vapor



When this album was released in 2007, the music industry was overflowing with Fallout Boy rip-offs writing lines of dialogue as pretentious as they were mind boggling,, or worse, Pinkerton (the wonderful second album by Weezer) fans overdoing the emotions to the point of parody. But where Fallout Boy had a certain grandiose charm that means its albums hold up better than almost all of their Emo contemporaries, Tegan and Sara were running through every possible emotional state when in love, and they weren’t being ironic, nor smart-alecky, they were being emotionally honest without whining (a key point against mainstream Emo during the 2000’s). Their early folk and Alanis Morrisette brand angst-rock influences were now being combined with a new found experimental bent (at least Sara Quinn was the experimental one), and a somewhat more poppy song writing burst. Most people at first assumed that the album “So Jealous” was the duo’s peak, but as the years pass it is becoming clear that “The Con” is not just their greatest album, but it is the “Blue” of our generation. This is an album that combines the emotionally honest singing, the heartbreaking flow of words of that epoch defining album, with an almost Beatlesesque joy of expression (think Abbey Road) as potent as it is beautiful.
The songs here are short and bittersweet (with the longest song only 3:37 long ) and they pack as much emotional heft and finely tuned song craft as any of Pink Floyd’s or Arcade Fire’s great songs. This economy of sound allows many of the comparatively unconventional songs (such as Relief Next To Me, Like O, Like H and Floorplan) to state their intents and unfold their ideas without wearing out their welcome (in order to get an idea of what I’m saying, try listening to Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve and just try not realizing that the same damn loop is repeated endlessly for 6 minutes, gets irritating fast doesn’t it, and that situation is exactly what the songs on this album avoid). Sara Quinn is normally responsible for the more adventurous song writing on the album, but her twin Tegan is a more than capable pop songwriter, contributing songs packed with hooks and emotion. Her contributions, as comparatively simple as they are, work largely as a counterbalance to Sara’s contributions. These doesn’t mean that the songs play off badly next to each other, on the contrary, they play rather like how George Harrison’s output always managed to equal (and sometimes better) John and Paul’s efforts in the Beatles, always contributing rather than overplaying. There are few weak passages on this disk, every song is solidly crafted and lyrically kills the self-ironic angst of mainstream Emo. You simply can’t find a more heartbreaking closer to a record than the short, perfectly crafted “Call It Off”.
It’s been said that “Blue” was the ultimate singer-songwriter record, a timeless record that captured the human soul so completely that people bring it out to allow themselves to cry. It now has an equal. To Paraphrase a review of PJ Harvey’s disk “Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea”, “Emotionally and musically, this is an album that will endure”.

Tracks
1.I Was Married ***
2.Relief Next To Me *
3.The Con ***
4.Knife Going In *
5.Are You Ten Years Ago **
6.Back In Your Head *****
7.Hop A Plane *****
8.Soil, Soil ***
9.Burn Your Life Down *****
10.Nineteen ****
11.Floor plan ***
12.Like O, Like H ***
13.Dark Come Soon ***
14.Call It Off ******

* Denotes a choice track, the more there are, the more awesome the track is





This is just a small thing i'm doing right now. please leave constructive criticism. Just starting.

[alelsupreme]

Pretty good. We're doing a review project, interested?

[thoughtful_salt]

sure. what will it entail?

[alelsupreme]

just joining up. ask jhereko about it, he runs the whole thing.

[Kiki]

[alelsupreme]

EDIT: names removed.

[thoughtful_salt]

What's the link?

[Hayden]