Tag Archives: Music

Tegan and Sara (Musicians and Authors)

I listen to Tegan and Sara all of the time. In fact, there was a moment not long ago where it was possibly the ONLY music I listened to, several of their albums on repeat like they were going out of style. Tegan and Sara have had a bit of visibility in the Indie scene over the past couple of decades, but only recently have I dug into their catalog as a whole. At the peak of my obsession, they released a memoir – titled High School – and an accompanying album of songs that they wrote in High School – titled Hey, I’m Just Like You – but revisited them with mature eyes and arranged them in a way to make them sound like new. A “retrospective”, you might call it.

I was so obsessed with Tegan and Sara at the time their memoir came out that I couldn’t help but read it. And it is exactly what you think it might be – a tale of two Queer Canadian twins, trading chapters to tell their high school story. Its rife with angst, punk ideologies, first time recreational drug use, and all of the emotional things that make a teenage personality engaging, like their struggles with identifying as Queer in the 1990’s to their first experiences with live music and the creation of their band.

I got the impression that this narrative came at the right moment for the twins, because it feels like the calm recollection after the youthful storm. Without the context of their musical catalog that statement lacks substance, but their music has always felt raw and energetic. Even with their early, more mild and folky sides, the twins have always had something urgent to say. When they matured into a more pop sensible tone, it still sounded like they had butterflies in their stomach. My favorite era is their mid career, which is the bridge between folk and pop to a very emotional indie rock that cuts the deepest.

Now, with their memoir, they’ve found a new space with only their words to express themselves, and their maturity has cultivated a simple and descriptive way to showcase their honesty. I think they set out to recall their High School experience as a way of understanding how the progression of their identity has benefited their music career. Their honesty is what has brought me and so many others great joy in listening to their music, and by writing it all out and comparing it next to their 20+ year catalog, it helped me place each album in it’s moment in time – seeing the existential characteristics in these musicians just like I might see in myself or my family and friends. It all feels so incredibly personal without feeling invasive, illustrating a unique take on life while still being relatable.

Their accompanying album makes so much more sense in that regard too, harping on old emotions with a more mature sense of reality. When I made this connection to the album title – Hey, I’m Just Like You – I realized that … they aren’t lying! Tegan and Sara ARE just like me! And you! And all of us! We all grow older and learn more things, but there are pivotal moments in our life that we remember and use them to describe ourselves. Whether we want to or not, we’ll likely keep those moments as pillars of our identity but see them in different lights as we grow smarter. It’s a lifelong process, producing a wide variety results, all with their own quirks. For me, its a gentle reminder that life is a series of chapters and doesn’t happen all at once.

Here are links to access their memoir High School in downloadable audiobook and eBook formats, as well as in print from our circulation. Here are links to access their accompanying album Hey, I’m Just Like You in streaming format or on CD. Hoopla offers a lot of Tegan and Sara material, but I might point you directly to The Complete Recollection, which is a compilation of their studio albums from 1999-2010, with tracks 38-78 illustrating my favorite era of the twins. Here, you’ll find music from So Jealous, The Con, and Sainthood, from 2004, 2007, and 2009 respectively. It’s all good, but those three albums are my very favorite.

— Reviewed by Noah, Bon Air

Music with Hoopla!

As years come and go, so do our contracts with certain services. Unfortunately, this new fiscal year has marked the end of our most recent contract with Kanopy… But! In return, we’ve picked up a contract with Hoopla! While Kanopy primarily focused in movies, Hoopla offers much more, including access to television shows, E-books, audiobooks, and comics! On top of all that, and for the first time in LFPL history, you can have access to stream a variety of mainstream music, popular classics, soundtracks, and more! You can browse their music catalog under their collections or genre sections, or by using their search function on the home page. In this piece, I’ll highlight a few of my favorites from this catalog that you can listen to today! Provide Hoopla with your library card information and gain access to all of these links.

Hoopla offers a TON of the incredibly well produced Audiotree Live Sessions. The image on our left is for the performance of some buddies of mine in Pinegrove, a band I’ve had the pleasure of playing with, and their skill made those shows some of the best I’ve ever been a part of. Yet ANOTHER example of the mysterious waters between Emo and Country, and they hit a home-run every time. Audiotree has helped several buddy bands I’ve played with over the years, marking them as a desirable privilege for any travelling independent band: Leggy, Trunkweed, The Reptilian, Ratboys, White Reaper, and Slingshot Dakota, just to name a few. Check out Invalids, Birds in Row, and Elephant Gym for more favorites.

This is the newest release from St. Vincent, marking it her 6th solo studio album. St. Vincent has one of my favorite catalogs in Art Rock, for her sophistication and guitar shredding skills. She’s toyed with many styles over the years, ranging from sexy and funky to delicate and charming, but this new effort has her leaning specifically into the nostalgia of New York in the 1970’s. A style that’s hard to emulate, but her songs here go toe to toe with many of the Classic Rock greats. In some places, this makes me wonder if my mom would tear up to these songs, fooling her into thinking it was a Bowie or Clapton tune. Despite how different this style may look for St. Vincent, I think she is as in her prime for this record as she’s always been.

This 2000 record may have been ignored or scoffed at later in Rock history for its short-lived fashion sense, but considering this album is 21 years old, Nu-Metal has never sounded so good. Perhaps I’m clouded by my nostalgia of listening to this as a kid while playing video games, but this unique blend of Metal, Industrial, Hip-Hop, and Electronica was ground breaking for its time and Linkin Park deserves that credit for shaping Rock and Metal moving into the 21st century. The music industry sucked a lot of life out of this project as time went forward, but this and their second album are Nu-Metal classics. A moment of silence for Chester Bennington, please… also, for Joey Jordison, of Slipknot, whom Hoopla offers a compilation of.

This album came out in 2003 and must have struck a chord with soon to be social media users, because I remember hearing “Such Great Heights” as the singular indie song that EVERYBODY knew once the internet made music discovery more accessible. There are countless covers of this song, and I’m SURE you’ve heard it in some capacity, but the rest of the album sews this single into a seamless work of art that can now be considered a godfather of Indietronica. I prefer Ben Gibbard here, as opposed to Death Cab For Cutie, for these graceful, groovy, and poetic tunes that the genre attempts to replicate to this day. This 10th Anniversary Edition has some covers and remixes of the tracklist as well.

— Reviewed by Noah, Bon Air Branch