On the first record, I also seemed to one of the songs proud.
I kind of felt a bit of a last morose.
I don't know if that's, I don't know, an inspiration for you,
but I was going to ask you what are some of the inspirations and have been,
because you've cited the boss a couple of times.
I mean, back on those early records,
I mean, that, the record that you're mentioning, that was like 2000.
So, I mean, I mean, we were listening to, I mean, so much,
we were just coming out of high school, so I mean,
we would have definitely been listening to a lot of, like, our parents,
still our parents' music, like things like Springsteen or whatever,
but I mean, we were really into like late 90s grunge and rock music.
I mean, that's what we listened to, was like Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana,
and Bikini Kill and like that kind of stuff.
So, nothing against the lens, personally.
I mean, like, I don't listen to our early music and think that our,
that our influences are obvious in the sonics of what we were doing.
Maybe our earlier stuff that obviously wasn't released as Tegan and Sarah,
like we had punk bands when we were teenagers and that sort of thing,
but like, I think ultimately, you know, the only real common connection
between like what I was listening to, what we write, what we do,
what we're inspired by is like just great songwriting.
I mean, I can really appreciate, I mean, most of what I listen to,
like all my playlists now is like R&B and hip-hop and, you know, electronic music
and like, I very rarely like, really like attach to anything that would be
specific to our genre of music.
I think that's a funny thing that maybe is unexpected for people.
Like, I think they're always imagining that, like,
I was just thinking about Jack Johnson, his run tour with him,
like we were talking about music the other night and I was like,
oh yeah, like I would assume that he would only listen to music that sounds like him.
But it's ridiculous because most of the time it's actually,
couldn't be further from the truth, you know, like you are naturally drawn to things
that are unlike what you do.
So as long as it has a great song, great melody, it's inspiring to me.
I feel really excited and not just like as a fan,
like listen to a really good song and you think like you can relate to it or whatever,
the artist part of my brain will be like, oh, that's interesting.
How do they, how do they arrive at that melody or what's that arrangement
or that, you know, you're sort of deconstructing it from a more science part of your brain?
If you're, I guess, said there, if you're always listening to things
and taking inspiration from different things,
are you always writing even while you're on tour,
even while you're producing another record or thinking of songs?
Certainly I don't do a ton of writing on the road.
It's so tough, like you're constantly moving locations,
especially in like Europe and North America, you spend most of your time on a bus,
so it's not really conducive to writing,
but certainly I think you are gathering.
Like both of us claim to not really listen to a ton of music while we're writing
or while we're recording, but the rest of the year,
you're sort of picking up things, like, you know,
whether it's subconsciously or consciously, you are exploring,
you know, I think every year we expand our musical repertoire
by listening to so much different stuff
and I think that it starts to leak into our music and inspire us.
You know, like Sarah was saying, I think we gravitate towards things that don't sound like us,
but then we pull things from that music and put it into our own music,
and we've gotten better at doing that over the years,
so you can start to hear influences a bit more,
and when you're young, like when we were 18 and 19 making records,
we just sounded like whatever was coming out of us, you know, like so.
Now there's a little more thought about it,
which is probably why we try not to listen to too much music that sounds like us,
because we don't want to just recycle the same ideas,
like our plan and our hope, you know, is to try to emulate
and create sounds that come from different genres,
so like Alligator is a great example of that.
It's so different than anything we'd ever done,
and it was so influenced by Sarah's exploration of like hip-hop and R&B
and, you know, mainstream pop music,
and so it doesn't sound like any of those things,
but there are elements of it that don't sound anything like what we've done before,
and that's, to me, that's evolution.
Yeah, definitely. It's something that's also a little bit different.
You've done it a couple of times before in some different cities,
it's like this acoustic or like intimate gig that you're doing tonight
at the La Ruta in Melbourne, and you're doing it Q&A as well.
What's the intention with these ones?
I guess just getting close to two fans as well, or giving them a different taste.
Just a different, I mean, it's definitely for fans,
but it's also like for us too, like we don't want to get too used
to doing the same thing over and over and over again,
and, you know, we, you know, like from night to night,
we might be like one night in the theater, one night in an amphitheater,
one night in a club, you know, that sort of thing,
so we try to keep our skills as sharp as possible
and we want the sets to be versatile and dynamic,
and, you know, we don't want people to feel like they're seeing the same show
that they saw last time we were in town,
so we thought that, you know, since we're doing these big gigs with Jack Johnson
and some of our fans may not be as interested in seeing us
in those types of venues, we thought we would offer something completely different,
which is, I mean, a lot of people that we've played for in Melbourne
probably haven't seen us in a small, like a really small venue,
probably in years, so it just gives an opportunity for us to play a little differently
and maybe not have as much of a show, like it's a little bit more relaxed
and just sort of do what we want to do
and be a little bit more flexible with the setlist and instrumentation.
And you know this one sold out?
So it should be a pretty awesome show, getting on to it as well.
Are we going to hear any kind of covers of different new songs or maybe?
We're playing a few tracks like from earlier records
that we've never played live before
or haven't played live in almost eight or nine years, so that's exciting.
So there will definitely be something for everybody tonight.
We'll still do some rock stuff as well too, but there's going to be lots of stuff.
I don't know, we're covering Girls Just Want to Have Fun with Jack Johnson
and I had a moment where I was like, maybe we should play that tonight
because it's been really fun.
But yeah, it's mainly just going to be like a few songs from every record
and then the Q&A, of course, is like super important to us
because I love interacting with our fans.
It's funny, we've done it quite a bit this year
and they pretty much always ask the same questions
and the questions themselves kind of drive us crazy
because they're like, what are your favorite Tiki and Sarah songs?
It's so hard to pinpoint that and who cares really.
But they really want to know and there's something about that
like when you take a step back and you're like, this is their opportunity
to ask you that question that's been burning inside of themselves.
So it's kind of exciting to do that with them.
If you have one question you want to be asked tonight, what would it be?
I mean, it's not, that's a tough question too
because it's like, I think the thing that's really interesting
about interviews and dialogue with fans and stuff like that
is when it's unexpected and when it's something that's very thoughtful
and very personal from their perspective
and part of what's challenging about doing press so often,
I think it's pretty universal that most artists and anybody being interviewed,
like after about 10 interviews, you've done it.
You've covered interviews.
That's it and then it's like a welcome to your life.
That's what you do and you're trying so hard.
You sound sort of ungrateful or like a bit of a jerk
but it is really hard to be inspired to answer the same questions thoughtfully
or with some sort of inspired new twist on the same answer
that any one person can go on the internet within five minutes
find answers to every single question that they want to ask you
and it can become exhausting
because you're just like doing the same thing over and over and over again
so the thing that the Q&A sometimes do is like
every once in a while you will get this real like zinger
where you're just like, wow, what a cool way to put that
or what an interesting, thoughtful thing to ask or whatever
so I mean, it's not that we hate these questions or anything
but it's true, like when someone says like,
what's your favorite teen in the entire song?
I mean, I don't know.
I don't ever sit down and listen to our music
except when we're writing new music
I'll get like, oh, this is really cool
we just wrote some new material for this dance artist in the States
and they won't come out for months or whatever
and right now I'm like, oh, those are great songs
because I haven't had to talk about them or play the shit out of them
or think about them too much
but for the most part, when someone asks me that question
I'm like, well, what do you mean?
Which songs make me not want to pull my hair out every single night?
Which songs do I think are reflective of our band?
Like it's a really tough thing to answer.
