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The proof of the pudding is in the sheer enjoyment

Live at last! First trip to The Point in ages (doesn't change much) but most definitely a great start to the gig year. Sell out crowd, too, and, perhaps an indication of 'trends', a substantial part of the Tegan and Sara starved audience were teen-young (and therefore much shorter than us) and sporting a wide variety of fashion. We weren't the oldest, though...



First up (picture above) were a New York based 3 piece, Northern State, who seem to tour a lot with Tegan and Sara. Its quite hard to define these 3 sassy ladies, but I'll give it a go with: articulate, sometimes political and often humourous lyrics (and banter) delivered in a style reminiscent of TLC, Beastie Boys with a touch of Bonde do Role and CSS. Hearing is believing, and whilst the band were certainly entertaining (and favourites of a good portion of the crowd). Worth a second hearing.



Tegan, Sara and band arrived (and left, for that matter) to tumultuous applause and cheers. Seems we've arrived quite late at this band, as lots of die hard fans were there loudly cheering the older songs. Broadly, the set was mostly taken from new album The Con, with The Con as 2nd song, followed by (no particular order) Call It Off, Like O Like H, Nineteen, Are You Ten Years Ago with Back In Your Head the penultimate song of the main set. Older stuff aplenty apart from, it seems, any really early stuff which they refused to play (but did warn upfront): Walking With A Ghost, Speak Slow, I Bet It Stung, Where Does The Good Go. Most of these songs are from their previous album So Jealous, which I procured from the merch stand. Excellent as well. The encore started with I Was Married plus 2 older songs. A superior class of banter as well, also very funny especially with local words/phrases. Best reaction was Tegan changing 'whose coat is that jacket' to 'whose cookie is that biscuit'.

What about that trend? The tracks from The Con also sounded louder live (akin to Howling Bells) and, to my ears, reinforced the Carina Round/Shirley Manson vibe with maybe a touch of Feist and the addition of a punkier sound from their older material. Whatever, they were brilliant. Go see indeed!

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