Tegan Quin - Tegan & Sara (07/02/2013)
Just announced for the 2013 Groovin The Moo festival, The 59th Sound chats with Tegan Quin, one half of sisterly duo Tegan & Sara who have just released their seventh album, Heartthrob.
Happy HEARTTHROB DAY in North America!
We are very excited that it’s Heartthrob day and that it’s finally here in North America, it feels that it’s overdue, just because we’ve already been out touring for like 3 months, so it’s been a very strange sensation where it feels like it was out 3 months ago, even though it wasn’t, so we’re really excited and it seems like it’s going very well and we’re all feeling really pumped up.
And then you get to celebrate this feeling again in a week when the album is released in here in Australia.
We can’t wait! Even though it wouldn’t be fair to all the fans, it’d be really funny if we could have a different release date, every day or every week, I’m certainly enjoying it.
But now, with the internet making the world so small, we don’t really have to wait for our own release date to hear the record.
And that’s what’s weird about not putting out all at one time. It’s always a strange thing for us that we still have to stagger the releases, because we know that fans aren’t stupid, they know how to get the record, but in my mind it always feels like it’s hurting the release in other places, because people download it for free because they can’t get it when it comes out, but I don’t question the logic as everyone else seems to think they know the best way to release music, but I’m just like"It should just come out the same day” but apparently not.
Tegan and Sara have always been great with rewarding their fans, with album pre-sale packages and limited edition releases, who controls the creative process for these packages and does it effect record sales?
The pre-sales are crazy actually, I mean the different packages all have different things in them and the big package sold out straight away, which is really cool, so the greatest part of the pre-sale really is the opportunity to do crazy, creative new stuff, so we had this amazing artist create 200 specialty necklaces and we did the ‘Heartthrob’ magazine, which was really exciting for us. We thought it would be stupid to make it all about Tegan and Sara, and a pencil kit, iPhone case, these are all things I’d love to be able to just have up on our store, but we don’t need to make a bunch of items like this to have in our store, where does it fit? It’s hard to take those items on the road, so we basically have been listening to what the fans want and they have been asking for these things, so with the pre-order, in a strange way even though it’s a part of getting people to pre-order your record the real benefit is you get to make new, creative items for your fans and people seem to be loving it, all of the packages have been arriving in the past 2 days and people have been tweeting up and storm and are really loving their specialty items. I haven’t seen anything in person, except for the magazine so in a couple of days we get to see all of the other items, I’m really, really excited!
You should be careful, if you haven’t seen them, your face might be blurred and Sara’s in the forefront.
(Laughing) Well there are some standards in place for creative quality control, don’t you worry.
Thank goodness! I’m sure you’ve seen ‘Almost Famous’, you don’t want that to happen.
The debut single from ‘Heartthrob’, Closer, has received a huge amount of love and particularly from people who I personally never expected would ever know who Tegan and Sara are. Are you two shocked with the reaction to the single?
I don’t think shocked would be the right word, I’m really relieved and excited.
We’re not being shy about the fact that we are very ambitious people and our ambitions for past records over the past years have been different, like the things we are ambitious about now are different. With ‘Sainthood’ we had different ambitions and with ‘The Con’ we had different goals, but with ‘Heartthrob’ our goal was to try to cut a chunk of the mainstream off and to get in there. For us it was time for Tegan and Sara to access the mainstream and in our minds, having Tegan and Sara on the radio would be better, we feel like our song writing and our band deserves to have a fighting chance at this different level and we also just thought it’d be really fun to appropriate pop music, back to the indie world where maybe there would be a little more integrity in the music. I hope we did that, that was our ambition with the actual record itself.
When ‘Closer’ came out, I was hoping that it would be received warmly, and it was. Then it just started to pick up speed and before we knew it, it was everywhere and I suppose that’s really awesome for the song and the band but mainly as a writer, it’s really exciting to see, like you said, a lot of people that we never necessarily like our band or like the record or the song, to see them embracing it, it’s nice and we really tried to challenge ourselves to write something different. We didn’t want to recycle the same ideas, we felt like our audience deserves something exciting and challenging and the idea that it’s more than just our audience that are embracing, it’s a win win.
Heartthrob is the bands 7th release and like you said every album has a different goal and I feel every album has a distinct sound and they each show change and growth, do you feel this has come with maturity or with more experience?
I think it’s all of it. I mean when I was 19, making our first record I’d never played to a click track, I’d never been in a stupid, I’d never sang with head phones on, I mean there’s so many things that you just have to grow over time with your band, you know you get used to touring, you get used to singing live, you get stronger as a performer, as a vocalist and then you’re writing changes and you get pushed.
Over the years I’ve read lots of reviews and before we sat down and started writing Hearttrob, I sat down with a lot of producers, musicians and managers and people that I knew in the industry and just asked for people to basically tell me what they think Tegan and Sara needs to do to be better at writing and better at producing records and a lot of people suggested writing from a different perspective and not so much you and I and changing directions in the bridge, they could be stronger and making it more slick and to hire musicians to play the instruments to make our parts even better and we tried all that and Heartthrob is the product of that and I think that Sara and I internally challenges ourselves and I think it’s maturity and being more confident.
I felt that I could sit in the studio and listen to someone playing a part that I came up with and help push them to take the part to the next level, where as in the past I would have been inclined to just want to do it myself and that’s a sign of Sara and I being more confident and more secure in ourselves as writers and not needing to do everything ourselves.
Was it hard to sit back and listen to someone playing your parts and not butting in and taking lead?
No, it was liberating. In a strange way I’ve been saying it’s like being an architect, I don’t need to be the construction worker or the plumber or the engineer.
Maybe in the past, Sara and I were trying to wear too many hats and that’s good, that’s why we are who we are, we needed to be the co-producers on our records, we needed to write every single song ourselves, we needed to do all that in order to have the confidence and foundations to do what we’re doing right now, I mean I don’t feel like we are doing less than we have in the past, I think we’re the architects and I’ve put every once of energy into the drawings that’s now built in front of us, it’s my plan, but I didn’t have to physically build it and I think that’s good because I’m not a builder.
Do you see this is something you will be doing more of in the future?
We’ve both worked with other bands before and we’ve co-written with other people now quite a bit and it’s something I’m interested in for the future.
When I don’t want to tour as much I’ll still want to be stimulated and creative so I can imagine working with other artists more.
For the time being, our number 1 priority is still our band and we’re still heavily focused on that, but it’s kind of cool being in the studio and just be sitting back and listening and thinking from that place, rather than always thinking about being the artist and being on tour and will this work, will this translate.
It’s nice to just be creative and not have to worry about how it gets presented live.
You’re a band that’s constantly on tour, recently including big stadium tours with The Killers and Neil Young, what do these big shows teach you about your live performance?
It’s funny, because I’m friends with a lot of musicians and a lot of them don’t want to do tours opening for other people, they like sharing the stage, they don’t like supporting, they don’t like having to win people over, but I think that’s all the reasons Tegan and I take a tour opening for a band. We’re very particular with who we tour with, so we make sure we’re standing in front of a great audience but ultimately the reasons we’ve taken tours is the reasons why a lot of people don’t.
I like having to challenge myself and getting up there and having to win people over, I love what I learn about our music and our band.
Cassie Walker
Heartthrob is out now through Warner Music
Tegan & Sara play Groovin The Moo 2013
Sat 27 Apr
Maitland Showground
Maitland
Sun 28 Apr
University of Canberra
Canberra
Sat 4 May
Prince of Wales Showground
Bendigo
Sun 5 May
Murray Sports Complex
Townsville
Sat 11 May
Hay Park
Bunbury
and their own headline shows.
BRISBANE
30 APRIL, TIVOLI THEATRE
MELBOURNE
2 MAY, PALAIS THEATRE
ADELAIDE
7 MAY, THEBARTON THEATRE
PERTH
9 MAY, METRO CITY
Happy HEARTTHROB DAY in North America!
We are very excited that it’s Heartthrob day and that it’s finally here in North America, it feels that it’s overdue, just because we’ve already been out touring for like 3 months, so it’s been a very strange sensation where it feels like it was out 3 months ago, even though it wasn’t, so we’re really excited and it seems like it’s going very well and we’re all feeling really pumped up.
And then you get to celebrate this feeling again in a week when the album is released in here in Australia.
We can’t wait! Even though it wouldn’t be fair to all the fans, it’d be really funny if we could have a different release date, every day or every week, I’m certainly enjoying it.
But now, with the internet making the world so small, we don’t really have to wait for our own release date to hear the record.
And that’s what’s weird about not putting out all at one time. It’s always a strange thing for us that we still have to stagger the releases, because we know that fans aren’t stupid, they know how to get the record, but in my mind it always feels like it’s hurting the release in other places, because people download it for free because they can’t get it when it comes out, but I don’t question the logic as everyone else seems to think they know the best way to release music, but I’m just like"It should just come out the same day” but apparently not.
Tegan and Sara have always been great with rewarding their fans, with album pre-sale packages and limited edition releases, who controls the creative process for these packages and does it effect record sales?
The pre-sales are crazy actually, I mean the different packages all have different things in them and the big package sold out straight away, which is really cool, so the greatest part of the pre-sale really is the opportunity to do crazy, creative new stuff, so we had this amazing artist create 200 specialty necklaces and we did the ‘Heartthrob’ magazine, which was really exciting for us. We thought it would be stupid to make it all about Tegan and Sara, and a pencil kit, iPhone case, these are all things I’d love to be able to just have up on our store, but we don’t need to make a bunch of items like this to have in our store, where does it fit? It’s hard to take those items on the road, so we basically have been listening to what the fans want and they have been asking for these things, so with the pre-order, in a strange way even though it’s a part of getting people to pre-order your record the real benefit is you get to make new, creative items for your fans and people seem to be loving it, all of the packages have been arriving in the past 2 days and people have been tweeting up and storm and are really loving their specialty items. I haven’t seen anything in person, except for the magazine so in a couple of days we get to see all of the other items, I’m really, really excited!
You should be careful, if you haven’t seen them, your face might be blurred and Sara’s in the forefront.
(Laughing) Well there are some standards in place for creative quality control, don’t you worry.
Thank goodness! I’m sure you’ve seen ‘Almost Famous’, you don’t want that to happen.
The debut single from ‘Heartthrob’, Closer, has received a huge amount of love and particularly from people who I personally never expected would ever know who Tegan and Sara are. Are you two shocked with the reaction to the single?
I don’t think shocked would be the right word, I’m really relieved and excited.
We’re not being shy about the fact that we are very ambitious people and our ambitions for past records over the past years have been different, like the things we are ambitious about now are different. With ‘Sainthood’ we had different ambitions and with ‘The Con’ we had different goals, but with ‘Heartthrob’ our goal was to try to cut a chunk of the mainstream off and to get in there. For us it was time for Tegan and Sara to access the mainstream and in our minds, having Tegan and Sara on the radio would be better, we feel like our song writing and our band deserves to have a fighting chance at this different level and we also just thought it’d be really fun to appropriate pop music, back to the indie world where maybe there would be a little more integrity in the music. I hope we did that, that was our ambition with the actual record itself.
When ‘Closer’ came out, I was hoping that it would be received warmly, and it was. Then it just started to pick up speed and before we knew it, it was everywhere and I suppose that’s really awesome for the song and the band but mainly as a writer, it’s really exciting to see, like you said, a lot of people that we never necessarily like our band or like the record or the song, to see them embracing it, it’s nice and we really tried to challenge ourselves to write something different. We didn’t want to recycle the same ideas, we felt like our audience deserves something exciting and challenging and the idea that it’s more than just our audience that are embracing, it’s a win win.
Heartthrob is the bands 7th release and like you said every album has a different goal and I feel every album has a distinct sound and they each show change and growth, do you feel this has come with maturity or with more experience?
I think it’s all of it. I mean when I was 19, making our first record I’d never played to a click track, I’d never been in a stupid, I’d never sang with head phones on, I mean there’s so many things that you just have to grow over time with your band, you know you get used to touring, you get used to singing live, you get stronger as a performer, as a vocalist and then you’re writing changes and you get pushed.
Over the years I’ve read lots of reviews and before we sat down and started writing Hearttrob, I sat down with a lot of producers, musicians and managers and people that I knew in the industry and just asked for people to basically tell me what they think Tegan and Sara needs to do to be better at writing and better at producing records and a lot of people suggested writing from a different perspective and not so much you and I and changing directions in the bridge, they could be stronger and making it more slick and to hire musicians to play the instruments to make our parts even better and we tried all that and Heartthrob is the product of that and I think that Sara and I internally challenges ourselves and I think it’s maturity and being more confident.
I felt that I could sit in the studio and listen to someone playing a part that I came up with and help push them to take the part to the next level, where as in the past I would have been inclined to just want to do it myself and that’s a sign of Sara and I being more confident and more secure in ourselves as writers and not needing to do everything ourselves.
Was it hard to sit back and listen to someone playing your parts and not butting in and taking lead?
No, it was liberating. In a strange way I’ve been saying it’s like being an architect, I don’t need to be the construction worker or the plumber or the engineer.
Maybe in the past, Sara and I were trying to wear too many hats and that’s good, that’s why we are who we are, we needed to be the co-producers on our records, we needed to write every single song ourselves, we needed to do all that in order to have the confidence and foundations to do what we’re doing right now, I mean I don’t feel like we are doing less than we have in the past, I think we’re the architects and I’ve put every once of energy into the drawings that’s now built in front of us, it’s my plan, but I didn’t have to physically build it and I think that’s good because I’m not a builder.
Do you see this is something you will be doing more of in the future?
We’ve both worked with other bands before and we’ve co-written with other people now quite a bit and it’s something I’m interested in for the future.
When I don’t want to tour as much I’ll still want to be stimulated and creative so I can imagine working with other artists more.
For the time being, our number 1 priority is still our band and we’re still heavily focused on that, but it’s kind of cool being in the studio and just be sitting back and listening and thinking from that place, rather than always thinking about being the artist and being on tour and will this work, will this translate.
It’s nice to just be creative and not have to worry about how it gets presented live.
You’re a band that’s constantly on tour, recently including big stadium tours with The Killers and Neil Young, what do these big shows teach you about your live performance?
It’s funny, because I’m friends with a lot of musicians and a lot of them don’t want to do tours opening for other people, they like sharing the stage, they don’t like supporting, they don’t like having to win people over, but I think that’s all the reasons Tegan and I take a tour opening for a band. We’re very particular with who we tour with, so we make sure we’re standing in front of a great audience but ultimately the reasons we’ve taken tours is the reasons why a lot of people don’t.
I like having to challenge myself and getting up there and having to win people over, I love what I learn about our music and our band.
Cassie Walker
Heartthrob is out now through Warner Music
Tegan & Sara play Groovin The Moo 2013
Sat 27 Apr
Maitland Showground
Maitland
Sun 28 Apr
University of Canberra
Canberra
Sat 4 May
Prince of Wales Showground
Bendigo
Sun 5 May
Murray Sports Complex
Townsville
Sat 11 May
Hay Park
Bunbury
and their own headline shows.
BRISBANE
30 APRIL, TIVOLI THEATRE
MELBOURNE
2 MAY, PALAIS THEATRE
ADELAIDE
7 MAY, THEBARTON THEATRE
PERTH
9 MAY, METRO CITY