Lord what happened to Tegan and Sara? Like I know they went pop for 2013’s Heartthrob but jeez. What were once prominent Canadian-indie artists, musicians and songwriters, these identical 35-year old twin sisters are back for 2016 with Love You to Death, a record that sounds like Rebecca Black could have her name on it more than any record I’ve ever heard. “Boyfriend,” the lead single, might be one of the worst pop songs I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
Superficial, lacking any sort of depth, rather boring, and carrying no weight or really even intelligence to their lyrics, Tegan and Sara’s Love You to Death, their ninth studio record, sounds like they asked Watson the super-computer to scan the internet for what pop music is and write an album. Or Siri. Maybe even that Amazon voice. It barely even sounds like Tegan and Sara had to be a part of this at all. Their vocals are so compressed and warped that it almost sounds inhuman. It’s honestly a vocal performance that’s almost equivalent to Japanese virtual-reality artist Hatsune Miku, who is literally a “humanoid persona voiced by a singing synthesizer application developed by Crypton Future Media.” And you wouldn’t believe the crowd that shows up for Hatsune Miku’s shows. As fake as she is, she still writes better songs than what’s here on Love You to Death.
Love You to Death sounds like someone giving up. Thinking about their first three records, how much emotion and thought went into song craft, and how raw it sounded, that was the best Tegan and Sara. Now they sound like fifteen year-old girls who just discovered Logic Pro on their Mac computers and wished that the guy who sits in the front of the Algebra classroom paid more attention to them. As John Oliver might put it: #NotMyTeganandSara.