Anything but a “con,” the brilliant new album The Con (Sire) by queer identical twin sisters Tegan and Sara ranks as their finest achievement to date. Capitalizing on the more musically experimental qualities of its predecessor, So Jealous, Tegan and Sara infuse The Con with their most assured and daring songwriting, and coupled with their more seasoned performance skills, reach new and unprecedented heights. Brilliant and stimulating songs such as “Relief Next to Me,” “Are You Ten Years Ago?,” “Back In Your Head,” “Soil, Soil,” “Nineteen,” “Burn Your Life Down,” “Like O, Like H,” “Dark Come Soon,” and the title track are certain to satisfy their established fan-base and newcomers equally. Tegan took time out of their busy tour schedule to answer some questions about The Con and more.

Gay & Lesbian Times: The sound of the new album The Con expands on the synth beats and keyboards and such of So Jealous – resulting in a more cohesive effort. Was that a conscious and mutual decision to further explore that kind of instrumentation?

Tegan Quin: On So Jealous we had worked with Matt Sharp (of The Rentals) and we toured a bit together. He had expressed interest and we had conversations leading up to the making of So Jealous about him coming in and playing. With this record (The Con) Sara and I, for the first time in our lives, we took an entire year and a half to take time off to write and record; so all the keyboards and guitars were mainly ours on this record. Matt came in and played bass instead. I definitely feel like we still were interested in exploring and reflecting different melody lines and instrumentation and layering and stuff. But, and it wasn’t even so much a conscious thing, we were more interested in continuing to do what we’d done on So Jealous, and we had the time and confidence to do it ourselves. As the demos started to come together, that was when we started to talk about who we wanted to produce and what band we were going to use. Matt Sharp’s name came up again. When we sent him the demos, he called us and said, “Yeah, there’s already a lot of keyboards (laughs) and piano and bass, so what do you want me to do?” We said we wanted him to play on the record and asked him what kind of ideas he had. He said he’d love to play bass. It was this funny little process we had going where we were demoing these songs and we had so much time with them. Like on most of my songs, I even recorded some drums on them. I felt like we could give a really good idea to the person that we chose to have come play, or in the case of Chris Walla (of Death Cab for Cutie), the person that we wanted to produce the record, to hear exactly what I had in my brain, exactly what I wanted to hear when we got into the study so that we could, as closely as possible, get that sound.

GLT: I’m glad that you mentioned Chris. Would you say that his influence is also present in the change of your sound?

TQ: It’s so difficult to really say. If you could hear the demos and compare them to the finished album, you might be able to say that better than I. I hear what I wanted all along and what I heard on the demos. I think that where Chris really shined was that I think he’s an amazing engineer, as well as a producer. In terms of picking everything from the mics to mic up the guitars to what vocal mics we used to what rooms we recorded in. We recorded the record in sequence as much as we could. On “I Was Married” and “Are You Ten Years Ago?” we pulled a lot of the tracks that we’d recorded ourselves into the recorded sessions and recorded onto those. The vocals on “Are You Ten Years Ago?” are my original demo vocals. I think that’s what made Chris such an amazing producer for our stuff. He really understood and grew to know the demos so intimately that there were aspects to what we had already recorded that he couldn’t let go of. He knew when and how to balance those thing with the new elements that we were recording and with the other instrumentation that Jason McGerr, Hunter, and Matt Sharp brought to the table.

GLT: You’ve only been releasing CDs for seven years, which is a short time. So it sounds like there is a confidence and proficiency that you and Sara have achieved, just in terms of working on your own and recording a demo to present to a producer for the next step. Do you feel as if you are much more confident in that area?

TQ: Oh, yeah, totally! I think not only confident, but competent. When we used to get into the studio, my God, it was like a nightmare. We’d say, (whining) “No, that’s not what I hear the drum sounding like,” and the drummer would be like, “Well, what do you want?” It would just be this very confusing process. Because we’re basically self-taught on the guitar and I know how to write and read music for the piano, but it was only the last record, So Jealous, that I even explored that part of my capabilities, because we never had time. For the first time (on The Con) it felt like we were allowing ourselves to build off the sounds that we’d come up with. We definitely are more confident than we used to be. That’s just partly where we were at when we were making this record, which was, at the time, our last record for Sanctuary (Records) before they closed their doors. We said, “Let’s make the record that we want to hear and that we would love to listen to and let’s not worry so much about doing it the conventional way or making a hit record. Let’s make a record that we love from start to finish, that’s 14 strong songs on it.”

GLT: You’re right about these songs being incredibly strong. There is an audible evolution in your songwriting.

TQ: Touring is wonderful, because you get to interact directly with your audience and you get to see the world. But another great thing about touring is that you’re playing everyday, and you’re getting better, and so when we finished (touring in support of) So Jealous, we had been playing our songs for two years, and as musicians and writers and players and entertainers, I think we had established the next step in our musicianship. And when we started writing for The Con, it was obvious how much more evolved we had become as writers and players. We had a template, we had a blueprint from which to work from the beginning, and I definitely hear the change. It’s exciting (laughs), it’s exciting to have records that reflect who you are as a person and how you’ve changed. To hear an evolution over our catalog is exciting because it keeps us interested in what we’re doing. I think we have the same enthusiasm that we had when we were 14 and we were recording songs on our little ghetto blasters at home. I still love making music the same way I did then.

GLT: Earlier you mentioned, “Are You Ten Years Ago?” is an incredible bit of new wave revival. It’s a great song to dance to. If it wasn’t your song and you walked into a club and heard it playing, would you dance to it?

TQ: (Laughs) I think there are a lot of songs on this record, that if I heard in a club, I would be dancing. I think we both were able to emulate and reflect a little bit of the kind of music that we were listening to for the first time. I think on “If It Was You” and So Jealous, we tried more than ever to do that, but in terms of how we made the records, it was still a sound that came out of the studio. We were a little more conscious of what the final product was going to sound like on The Con. “Are You Ten Years Ago?” definitely has a quality to it that is very intense and danceable, for sure.

GLT: Are there remixes planned for it?

TQ: Going over to the major (label) world, which we’ve done now, that was one of the first things we had to deal with, was “Who do you want to send songs out to for remixing?” (laughs) In the past, people have remixed us, but we certainly weren’t a part of choosing who they were.

We approved a list of people that they (Sire) could send out songs to. I love hearing interpretations of our music. I love when people remix our stuff.

GLT: “I’m not unfaithful, but I’ll stray,” from the song “Back in your Head,” is one of the most honest lines about fidelity that I’ve ever heard in a song. Is that something that you and your sister struggle with in relationships?

TQ: (Laughs) Yeah, I think we both do. I think Sara (does) more than me. When I heard that song, I definitely had a good chuckle. When I sing background on that song every night, I feel that. I think as women who are dating women – not that I’ve only experienced that with women, I think that when I was dating men I felt the same way – it’s difficult. You get to a point where you are feeling very comfortable and familiar with your situation and your partner and the day comes when you meet someone who knocks you off your feet. You don’t necessarily want to leave your comfortable, amazing life that you’ve set up. I know in terms of Sara’s situation, I don’t think she was saying “I want to leave this person that I’ve been with for four years who is everything I’ve ever wanted.” From the very beginning, and this is something that Sara talks about, she admitted to her partner that she is going to, at some point, emotionally connect to someone, and it’s almost going to be a necessity. She’s going to have to get emotionally addicted and obsessive about somebody. But (paraphrasing) “I’m not going to leave you and I’m not going to cheat. But that is the way I am. And there will come a point where our relationship will become a distant thing, but I will come back.” I love that! I feel the same way you do! I feel it’s a very honest expression of what happens for people. In common day society and relationships we’ve become so over-stimulated and we’ve become reliant on this obsessive immediate response to satisfy ourselves. Sara and I think of ourselves as “love scientists,” constantly reflecting on our relationships, which keeps them fresh because we’re constantly looking at them from different angles. Because we travel and we’re away so much we’re able to reconnect and disconnect and reconnect and disconnect and it sort of drags out our relationships. I see a lot of my friends going through break-ups and getting together and falling in love. I think this has something to do with the way that society is changing and how love may be something that we can expect to have many times in our lives instead of just once.

GLT: I’m also fascinated by the song “Nineteen,” both for the way it communicates heartbreak as well as for being a song about being 19, which for you and Sara wasn’t that long ago. What do you think a song with the same title might sound like if you were to write it at 37 or 47?

TQ: When I was writing both “Are You Ten Years Ago?” and “Nineteen,” I was using age as a metaphor. I was saying, at 19 I had gotten out of a five year relationship, and instead of writing about that relationship, I jumped into a new relationship. I was amazed and terrified and saddened, but also excited and totally mystified at how it was possible at 26 I was feeling the same things I was feeling at 19. How is it possible that I haven’t learned something? That I’m back in the same place suffering and tormented? Don’t I get a “Get out of jail free” card or a pass or something to get beyond the stage of being tormented by love? So I think that at 37 this song would sound exactly the same. We do the same things over and over again. That’s what’s so great and so horrible about love and the human condition. We will love and torment and get hurt and break our hearts, and then go right back to it. We love it, we’re addicted to it, it’s how we survive. It’s where we derive so much of our passion from.

GLT: In June (2007) Cyndi Lauper organized the True Colors Tour which featured a several LGBT acts and raised funds for a few LGBT organizations. If they do it again, would it be something that Tegan and Sara might be interested in doing in the future?

TQ: I don’t know if the people putting it on would have any clue as to who we are (laughs). It’s certainly something that I read about and heard a lot about when it was happening and I definitely think it’s an amazing thing. Sara and I grew up listening to Cyndi Lauper. We’ve covered “Time After Time,” and we used to play “Money Changes Everything” after we got off stage. She’s certainly been an influence on us. When we were kids, we used to dance around the house listening to Cyndi Lauper. A lot of the artists that were participating in the tour that you were talking about are artists that we respect. Sara and I have always been out, proud artists, and a big part of our audience is teenagers and college students and gay people. One of our roles as artists is to reflect how important it is to be out and comfortable and confident, and we’re happy to be a part of that. Anything we can do, we do.