

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 harmonizing, 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.