In 2013, Tegan and Sara released their seventh album Heartthrob and immediately shot to a new level of fame. After a slow build over nearly 15 years, in which they steadily massed a fervent hardcore fanbase as a folk-inflected singer/songwriter duo, they metamorphosed in a blink into a massive pop group: instead of dual acoustic guitars and unadorned, harmonic vocals, they teamed up with Top 40 producer Greg Kurstin and adopted an ultra-glossy, near-blinding synth-pop sound. There's a razor-fine line between populist and derivative, and theirs was a calculated risk that paid off—not only was the record critically and commercially successful, it contained some of Tegan and Sara's best songwriting work to date.
After such an impressive and self-imposed breakaway, it's a bit of a shame that their new album, Love You to Death, feels like a focused retread of its predecessor. It's not a bad record—it's well-crafted, with some peaks equal to Heartthrob—but it lacks that intangible magic that so effortlessly bridged the first phase of their career to this new one. It might be unfair to ask them to recapture that moment, when they so recently were able to pull off the double accomplishment of becoming a new band while keeping their longtime fans, but between the bouncy synth hooks and sleek pop production (the band reconnected with Kurstin), you can feel some of the excitement draining away.
Their creative DNA has stayed more or less the same since they first began writing music, no matter the genre trappings around them. At their best, they boil down love songs to their purest, aching essence, capturing complicated emotions in economical, less-is-more lyrical strokes. “You kiss me like your boyfriend,” they coo on the album's lead single, “Boyfriend”—a moment of unrequited affection that sears through the buoyant synths and strike at your heart without halting the pace of the party. It's rare to find complex, personal songs about love and relationships matter-of-factly sung from a queer perspective, and in that respect alone Tegan and Sara remain a crucial voice in the pop landscape.
Elsewhere on the album, things a just a little less distinct; album cuts like “Faint of Heart” and “Stop Desire” are sturdy, but rely on a certain generic, contemporary-pop sound that could belong to anyone. Another highlight, “100X,” again shows how affecting they can be when they bend the tools of Big Pop to their personal ends. It's another tale of a relationship gone sour, this time with the narrator taking responsibility for the breakdown: “You were someone I loved/Then you were no one at all/It was cruel of me to do what I did to you,” they sing, the words placed simply around a sparse piano melody and some softly glowing synths. There's a straightforward emotional maturity in the moment that has always distinguished their best work. The minimal instrumentation serves double duty as both stark moment of contemplation and mid-album comedown.
Although songs like the Vince Clarke-indebted “BWU” begin to quicken the album’s pulse in the second half, it's not until the second-to-last track that Love You To Death reaches its bombastic peak, when “U-Turn”'s wet, squelching keyboards punch through the record's firmament and blast off into the stratosphere. It sounds like the Song of the Summer 1986, all pool parties, tiki torches and BBQs. It's proof that even though they might not capture lightning in a bottle twice, Tegan and Sara are still pushing hard to beat their own expectations, even this far into their career.
