Tegan & Sara: Sainthood

The danceable, buzzy, ’80s-influenced pop-rock of Tegan & Sara has become increasingly common of late, thanks in part to fellow travelers like The Gossip and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. That means the Quin sisters may not get the credit they deserve for the way they construct and deconstruct songs. More than just a throwback act, Tegan & Sara have a lot in common with Spoon in the way they tug at the edges of classic girl-group pop and R&B, emphasizing rhythmic punch while keeping their melodies clean and lyrics memorable. True, there’s something faintly robotic to the approach—more so than ever on the duo’s sixth LP, Sainthood, which is more or less a copy of 2007’s superb The Con—but the songs are so well-tooled that it’s hard to hold their precision against them.