On Tuesday night, I went to Tegan and Sara’s opening show of their North American tour at the Orpheum. Astronautalis and An Horse were the guests touring with them. It was a pretty fucking awesome concert.

Alyssa and I sat in the orchestra section in the middle of the venue near the back rows. Despite being quite far from the stage, it was good in the sense that we could see everything clearly. All the lights, all the members of the groups, the sound, everything was superb. The only thing that sucked was neither Alyssa nor I could take photos :(

Astronautalis (Andy Bothwell) opened first, and was a decent performance. It was very hard to hear to understand his upbeat style of presentation which varied from talking to screaming like the FOB lady in this San Francisco bus fight. However, I really liked how he could transition from electronic to an indie rock rhythm, to even a hip-hop beat without losing his focus.

An Horse then swaggered onstage, and was more interesting to listen to. In some ways, they sounded similar to Tegan and Sara with their somewhat mellow style of indie rock. Here’s one of their songs that you can listen to, Camp Out.

After a brief intermission, the main reason I went, Tegan and Sara, walked on the stage. The first song they played was Arrow, which was my favourite song on their latest album, Sainthood. And maybe because Arrow played first and set a precedence, I was just so pumped. From the opening riff of the song to the last line of lyrics, it was just a mind-fuck. I was plain outright in awe how amazing they sounded live. From that point on, I knew I was going to have a great night, and that’s what exactly happened.

The bulk of Tegan and Sara’s set during the night were songs from Sainthood (no surprise there) with some songs from their previous albums So Jealous and The Con. Although I never listened to So Jealous, Sainthood in my opinion was much better suited for my musical tastes than The Con, a much darker sounding album.

After playing what was suppose to be their last song, everyone got up clapping and shouting. But I highly doubt that anyone expected them to come back on stage for an encore that lasted another 30 minutes. I thought it was a very nice gesture by them, and it really showed just how much they loved performing for us, the fans.

What made the night even better was the signature Tegan and Sara concert storytelling. From Tegan doing an interview smelling damp and gross to Sara hoping two strangers would become emotionally dead, it really added personality to the performance. In some ways, it even showed you just what type of people they are.

Quite arguably, the best story was when Sara explained how she barely got any candygrams in junior high. It was one of those moments where you felt genuinely bad for someone. Then when she messed up on the next song Red Belt, she openly said “I really botched that shit up. It’s no wonder I never got a candygram.”

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