All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Singer-songwriter duo Tegan and Sara packed two documentaries and a live concert into their latest release. The CD/DVD package Get Along is an impressive collection for the twin sisters, who are known for their endearing and playful live shows.
Sara Quin, one-half of the Canadian duo, said she hopes the intimate look into their lives will show the world there is a low-key side to their quirky personas.
“We’re just normal people and I didn’t want it to be too over-the-top funny, or too over-the-top rockstar-y. I just wanted it to be normal, middle-of-the-road,” Quin deadpanned in an interview with Wired.com. “We should’ve put that on the package: ‘Middle of the road. Not very funny. Not very intense.'”
The Get Along DVD/CD set, which came out Tuesday, contains a 30-minute documentary called States (directed by Danny O’Malley), a second short documentary called India (directed by their friend Elinor Svoboda) and a 70-minute, stripped-down concert video and CD recorded in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Wired.com got on the phone with Sara Quin, who we last heard singing alongside Theophilus London on his track “Why Even Try,” to talk about the stress of creating documentaries, constantly wanting to please fans with humor, and lesbians who like Justin Bieber (not to be confused with the internet phenomenon Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber).
Wired.com: How did Get Along come about? What made you want to put out two documentaries and a live set?
Sara Quin: In a day and age where everyone is watching these really awful YouTube clips — like cellphone videos — en masse, I’m like, “Why would we spend money making a video that looks good?” Because people don’t seem to care. But, having said that, from an archival perspective we always want to film. Every couple of years we always talk about filming something for down the road. For when we’re old and our children are embarrassed and ashamed of us. And we work at a bookstore — if those even exist anymore — and they say, “You weren’t in a band!” And I’m like, “No really, we used to used to have a career.” So for archival purposes, for proof for our children, we definitely want to collect as much footage as possible. And if you’re going to do it, you might as well put it out.
Wired.com: It has to be challenging to do something like this in a way that hasn’t already been done.
Quin: We talked about ways that we could do it that wouldn’t feel completely stock. So we decided that we wanted to do a concert but we would strip everything down. We did a big concert video years ago and I ended up thinking to myself, “This doesn’t feel special.” The music documentaries and DVDs that I remember being inspired by when I was growing up, they had a varied amount of concert footage — some live-on-stage, “Hello, Cleveland!” stuff — and then there was also acoustic stuff, and alternate versions. So we wanted to do something like that.
“These projects that span years, I’m always like, ‘Oh god, why are we doing this?’ But I’m happy with how it turned out.” Wired.com: How did you go about picking the directors and the projects they would work on?
Quin: We didn’t go too overboard with planning or details. We knew we wanted to make a couple of different things so we picked a couple of directors that we liked and we sort of let them run with their own ideas. We brought Danny O’Malley when we were out on tour with Paramore and we let him do a retrospective of the last 10 years of touring in the U.S. He had such a beautiful eye it sort of came together very naturally. And then our friend Elinor, who we’ve known since high school, we were going to take a trip to India and we were going to do some shows but we were also going to bring some friends and our mom and she had just spent some time in India so we wanted to bring her along. She was someone who was intimate with us and could be like a pal and be that fly on the wall. It was an experience and we wanted someone to capture it.
Wired.com: There’s a lot in this collection. Was it tough to compile? Were there fights during the process?
Quin: It took us just over a year to put the whole thing together because we had to create a package and an idea of how we were going to make it all fit into a cohesive package, not just slapping some stuff together. We always come up with these creative projects and give ourselves timelines and then it always takes 700 times as long to do them. Then we’re like arguing and blaming each other like, “You came up with this DVD idea, you finish it!” [Laughs] Seriously, it’s like, “Who here is responsible, put your hand up!”
Wired.com: Is that different than what it’s like when you record an album?
Quin: It’s so different than making a record. When people are like, “I went to the Bahamas and I made a record for a year,” I’m always like, “Who the fuck is funding your fucking project? Jesus!” For us anyways we’ve never had the budget to do that. Ours are always like, “You’ve got two weeks, good luck!” So these projects that span years, I’m always like, “Oh god, why are we doing this?” But I’m happy with how it turned out.
Wired.com: Do you have any favorite moments from the documentaries or live DVD?
Quin: I just saw a documentary, which I refuse to tell you what it is because I don’t want to be that person that talks badly about other people, and at the end of it I was thinking, “How on Earth did people let this come out?” It was so un-fucking-flattering and we’re such control freaks. Of course there are times in our documentary where I think we look gross, but that’s as unflattering as it gets. We definitely wanted something that was more polished and professional. We’ve done other DVD footage where we’re like screaming and fighting and having fits or whatever, and I think that was very representative of where we were at when we were 22. But I wanted this to have a much more professional feeling to it.
Wired.com: How so? What made you want to push so hard for that?
Quin: If nothing else it shows that we’re not just big jokers. Even in this interview already it’s like one-liner, one-liner, I’m just constantly waiting for the moment to try to be funny and make you like me and I think we do that in our career. I worry that we rely too much on that as a crutch. When we started making this documentary people were saying, “That’s great, you’re so funny!” Even our family and our record label. And I was like, you know what? Let’s not make it funny.
Quin: I think that’s the thing with our public personas, which sometimes make people think that we’re showing you everything. We’re not really. We’re showing you that we’re funny and goofy and silly and don’t take ourselves seriously and you want to be my friend and invite me to a barbeque. And then the other side is I’m basically a complete nincompoop and always have a broken heart and no one likes me and rejects me. Those are the two things we show you and it’s like, “Well, OK fine. Eighty percent you don’t really see.”
We actually function and we’re normal and we do taxes and we’re not that funny all the time. We’re professionals. We’re businesswomen. We cry. We laugh. We’re just normal people and I didn’t want [the documentaries] to be too over-the-top funny, or too over-the-top rockstar-y. I just wanted it to be normal, middle-of-the-road. Sounds pretty exciting. We should’ve put that on the package: “Middle of the road. No very funny. Not very intense.” [Laughs]
Wired.com: Why did you choose to film the live DVD at Warehouse Studio in Vancouver? Does that venue have significance for you guys?
Quin: The space itself is in the neighborhood where, like, my mom lives down there and I have a place down there. It’s a neighborhood institution. But honestly we’ve never been able to play at the Warehouse because it’s far too nice and out of our league. We’re usually in somebody’s stinky basement making records. That could never be a studio that we would have worked in until now.
For this we were like, “Let’s go into a studio that looks nice and you don’t come out with a staph infection!” At this point in our career, thank god, we don’t normally play for 75 people, like we did for this. We’re lucky enough to play for thousands of people, which is fantastic. So we had this idea to bring in friends and family who probably hadn’t seen us play up-close-and-personal like that in probably a decade. We also wanted to bring in some fans who have never seen us play that way before. That was the mission. Both shows we taped for four and a half hours, because with every fucking mistake we had to stop and start over. I needed a thousand drinks after those two days of taping. My nerves were shot.
“Did you see the interview he did with Chelsea Handler? That is how I decided it was OK for me to like Justin Bieber.” Wired.com Well, I hate to do this, because this is going to require you to be funny, but I have to ask about a fellow Canadian. Justin Bieber: Hot or not?
Quin: You know, I have Justin Bieber’s latest record and I think from a songwriter, pop-writing perspective, some of what he does is so hard to do. I think that there’s a part of me that’s like, “He’s a kid and I admire him.” He’s a pop star, he’s freaking adorable, and he’s got a great voice. It’s going to be interesting when he can finally grow a beard. What will it be like when he’s a man? Will it be like Justin Timberlake where all of the sudden you’re like, “Whoa, you’re a man!” I just don’t know. But with his music I’m just like, thumbs up. I’m totally behind that.
Wired.com In five years he could be the one brining sexy back, we just don’t know.
Quin: Sometimes I’ll be listening to Justin Bieber or like these other artists who are underage and they’re singing about love and then you’re thinking about love or the person you like or that you’re sleeping with and you feel like you are creepy. I’m a grown woman, I’m 31 years old, and I’m like thinking about things that they shouldn’t even know about yet. And then it’s like, “Am I gross for listening to this music and then applying it to an adult situation?”
I see why it makes people feel funny. Did you see the interview he did with Chelsea Handler? Following this interview you need to YouTube that because that is how I decided it was OK for me to like Justin Bieber. [I did. She was right.] Because, I could be off the mark here, but I really believe that there was a bizarre sexual tension there. He was like legs-spread, acting macho and being flirtatious with her and you can tell that she’s just a little bit caught off-guard. It’s amazing. If Chelsea Handler can go there, I can too. Even gay women. Even as a giant gay woman I can be like, “He’s so strangely cute.” It’s weird.
Get Along is out now on Warner Bros. Records.
