So Jealous

So Jealous

When legendary music manager Elliot Roberts signed twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin as a new millennium began, he felt, at least in part, he had landed the next generation of Canadian folk-rock royalty, the successors in the lineage of old pals Neil and Joni. “Elliot still sees the non-stop love songs and the weird pop sound of the last two records as just a stage on our way to being socially conscious singer-songwriters,” Tegan, only half-joking, said in 2005. Indeed, the pair’s fourth album, 2004’s So Jealous, demonstrated just how boundless their palettes were becoming. The woozy electronic R&B of the title track, the cascading harmonies and skywriting guitars of opener “You Wouldn’t Like Me”, the wicked Pixies lurch of “Downtown”: These moved far beyond the reach of coffeehouse harmonising, though they still made time for plenty of that during these anthems of self-doubt and romantic betrayal. A proclamation of adventurousness and intent, So Jealous was the start of a commercial breakthrough that Tegan and Sara would consecrate three years later with The Con. But these songs capture the unease of early adulthood with a tenderness and an edge that still connect.