Canadian duo Tegan and Sara will release their 10th studio album, Crybaby on October 21 as part of their recently announced new deal with Mom+Pop Music.
They’ve also just shared the next single from the project – the sweet, anthemic Yellow – accompanied by a Mark Myers-directed video that playfully pays homage to Coldplay’s video for their 2000 song of the same name.
The upcoming album was co-produced by John Congleton, who has previously worked with Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten, and was recorded at Studio Litho in Seattle and Sargent Recorders in Los Angeles. To create this album the sisters worked in a different way to previous records.
“This was the first time where, while we were still drafting our demos, we were thinking about how the songs were going to work together,” Tegan said. “It wasn’t even just that Sara was making lyric changes or reorganizing the parts to my songs, it was that she was also saying to me, ‘This song is going to be faster,’ or ‘It’s going to be in a different key.’ But Sara effectively improves everything of mine that she works on.”
“Maybe I am the renovator. I’m the house-flipper of the Tegan and Sara band.” Sara said of their creative process.
As for new single Yellow, Sara says the song “was written after we began to take steps to heal the bruises we have both carried with us since adolescence and early adulthood – wounds that never quite healed right and flare up seasonally, sending us spiraling backward in time. Are we doomed to remain forever 15, breaking up and breaking apart? I hope not.”
She adds that the video “was shot in Vancouver, a city that didn’t feel big enough to hold us both when we arrived here the first time. Twenty-two years later, we’re back, calling it home.”
The new album isn’t the only creative project the pair have coming up. Amazon Freevee will be releasing High School, a new original coming-of-age series co-created and executive produced by Tegan and Sara and good friend Clea DuVall.
The series is based on the twins’ critically acclaimed memoir of the same name. High School stars TikTok creators and TV newcomers Railey and Seazynn Gilliland, portraying the high school versions of Tegan and Sara. Special guest stars Cobie Smulders and Kyle Bornheimer will play the twins’ parents. The series recently wrapped filming in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Also on the horizon is the middle-grade graphic novel duology Tegan & Sara: Junior High and Tegan & Sara: Crush, written by the twins and illustrated by Eisner Award-winner Tillie Walden. The contemporary story is about identical twins growing up and growing apart, coming to terms with their queerness and falling in love with music over the course of junior high. The first volume is due for release in 2023.
Tegan and Sara have chatted to OUTinPerth many times over their long career, check out our interview from 2013.
OIP Staff, image: Eluvier Acosta
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