Tegan and Sara - Love You To Death

Tegan and Sara
Love You To Death
2016
Spotify

Tegan and Sara are not really what they once were. Before their take on indie-pop was fantastically new and exciting now however they have discovered a pop formula that they aren't going to stray from. This new album Love You To Death really sticks with the pattern but oddly enough this is not such a bad thing. They style they have fallen in to fits them like a glove and the music is super dialed in just with a Taylor Swift-esque pop style. You really won't find a song over three and a half minutes on this record just enough to give you an earworm taste and then on to the next. The album is also ver of the moment focused more on sound bites than it is overall staying power. Here's the thing though the record, produced by The Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin, has a strict pop formula it is just very very good. Their homage to the pop ballads of the 80s is all over this album but in the end it just works. You will find yourself singing along, dancing and really getting in to this record though every punk rock bone in your body may want to run away screaming. But the music keeps you in there because it is done at such a very high level.

Some Tegan and Sara evangelists likely won't be to pleased with this record either because it lacks that edge that much of their early work had. by the end of the record you are looking for something that is just a little different to mix up the constant sugar rush but that moment unfortunately never comes. You can almost see the neon and smell the aquanet dripping off of this album. But to their credit Tegan and Sara have managed to make an album that really has zero fat on it. At a slim 31 minutes and ten tracks this record sneaks in messes some shit up and is out the door before you even know it was there. You are definitely more enthralled with the earlier tracks than the latter but that is because they front load the record with the bigger more robust tracks. There is a pull here for the Tegan and Sara of old but this works too so we arrive at a point where they know exactly what they are doing whether or not we think it is what they should be doing. This record is most likely not going to be your new favorite, but some of these tracks are more than worth your time.

7.2 out of 10