So Jealous (20th Anniversary Edition)

So Jealous (20th Anniversary Edition)

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 nonstop 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. So Jealous was a proclamation of adventurousness and intent. The album’s 20th-anniversary reissue not only reaffirms that feeling, but also demonstrates just how willing and able Tegan and Sara were to bend preconceptions of their sounds. While writing the record, they lived on opposite ends of Canada, meaning the demos they mailed to one another were a crucial part of the process. Unearthed here, those home recordings are electrifying. Howling through tape hiss, “I Bet It Stung” reaches some of the same epiphanic heights as Neutral Milk Hotel. Savage and speedy, “Speak Slow” funnels the power and radiance of Floridians like Against Me! and Hot Water Music into solo acoustic home recordings. And Sara’s demo of “Walking with a Ghost” is an absolute revelation, with her dual senses of repetition and dynamic reiterating the brilliance of the song’s simple core. 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 connects. That’s apparent in five new electronic remixes from DJs like Manila Killa and Matoma, too, where the duo’s vulnerable hooks become the emotional semaphores inside arching dance tracks. It’s probably not what Elliot Roberts would have imagined a quarter-century previous, but it’s a reminder of just how imaginative and open these two twins from Calgary, then in their twenties, were.

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