TEGAN

Although a weeklong junket can get a bit tiring, Tegan Quin is clearly thrilled to be back in the role of interviewee.

"Once the main record blitz is done, we tour for a year and a half and you don't answer those kinds of questions," she remembers. "It feels like a decade since I've answered questions, so it's great."

Explaining that the twins would usually take a few months off before writing another record, Tegan says their latest was special because of its lengthy prep time. This allowed the girls to get back in touch with reality.

"We wanted to force ourselves into hibernation and spend some time just hanging out. I just got out of a five-year relationship, so I needed some time to get my life back on track, get a place and do a bit of traveling."

The result is The Con, which maintains the ultra-poppy rock hooks of its predecessor while delving into uncharted sonic territories. "Soil, Soil" abandons the fuzzed-out guitars of So Jealous in favor of folksy acoustics and delicate piano musings. Ironically, if not for her sister, the Tegan-penned demo would have climaxed with a guitar-heavy wank-fest.

"It was basically as it is now, but instead of it ending, the whole song repeated itself louder and faster." Sara had a different direction in mind, as Tegan explains. "When she sent it back and I downloaded it, I thought there must be some mistake. 'It's only a minute and thirty seconds! Where is the rest of the song?' She had literally just chopped off the end."

With their demos in hand, the pair left for Portland to work with Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla. The production team, ecstatic to work together, aimed to use the source material rather than re-record the whole thing.

"He'd just be like, 'This guitar part's really great; I don't think we're going to be able to redo this,'" she says of Walla. "And we'd be like, 'Yes! We don't have to remember how to play it.'"

During the two-month session, guests were invited to play on the record. Former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp came in to play on all of Sara's compositions while AFI bassist Hunter Burgan came in to play Tegan's songs.

"Hunter was super excited to be involved in some way," she boasts. The punker had been sent the demos and was thrilled about a number of tracks, though arguably they were the wrong ones.

"He named all of Sara's songs," Tegan begrudgingly laughs. "I was like, 'That's good you like all of Sara's songs, but you're only playing on mine.' He was fine with that."

Five Occupations Tegan Considered Before Becoming a Musician (For Real)

From Sara:

1. Veterinarian, specializing in polar bears in the Great White North (age 5).
2. Clown. Seriously (age 7).
3. She'll deny it, but in high school she was fantastic on a pair of roller blades. She could've been a body double in Hackers (an amazing movie with Angelina Jolie from the '90s).
4. Customer service agent or phone operator. Tegan was trained as a "youth counselor" on a teen line in high school, and was technically proficient when filling out assessment forms from pranksters looking to take the piss out of "technically proficient youth counselors."
5. Mathematician. In grade three she even made it to the special "fractions lunchtime camp." (Side note: I wasn't smart enough, but I cried and they let me go anyway.)

SARA

Near the end of her sister's interview, Sara Quin walks into the room, fresh from doing a few Q&As of her own. She's been enjoying her time in the Big Apple more than she did in the past.

"This trip I was thinking I'd do more of what I never have time to do, like go to museums and art galleries," the soft-spoken singer says. "Me and Tegan are going to see a Broadway play tonight!"

As the conversation drifts back to discussing The Con, Sara mentions that it's their first record to have a bit of hype around it.

"With So Jealous, I felt we were in this place where people were like, 'You're putting records out still? That's great!' With this one, everybody would ask when it comes out or who was working on it and what it was sounding like."

Sara also dabbled with new musical directions, complementing straightforward pop songs like "Back In Your Head" with the symphonic grandeur of "I Was Married," but she really focused on her lyrical skills for the disc.

"I hated writing lyrics," she admits. "It was like pulling teeth for me. Listening to the older records, I always cringe a little bit at things I was saying."

Sara chose to write more about the people in her life than herself on The Con. The mid-tempo emo ballad "Burn Your Life Down" focuses on the Quins' grandfather after the death of his wife of 61 years.

"They used to travel all over North America, drive around and go to flea markets and tractor shows and all sorts of stuff they were involved in after they retired. He was saying how it was awful to be in the car without my grandma and when he looks next to him at the passenger seat it makes him feel so sad."

Indeed, over a Rhodes organ and shuffling backbeat, Sara plaintively coos on the touching song, "Keep on fighting to remember that nothing is lost in the end."

Getting the wrap-it-up signal from her sister, Sara apologizes about cutting things short.

"I feel bad because I didn't get much time with you, but I know Tegan yammered on and on," she jokes of her sister.

The duo is out the door for another of the week's many photo shoots. Although still not entirely comfortable with the process, Sara understands it's all part of being an in-demand buzz band.

"It's one of those things that comes with the job."

What you didn't know about Sara

Tegan says:

• "Sara is obsessively clean. An example of this obsession is that she washes her floors every morning even when she has house guests sleeping on her couch and the floors are not dirty, not even a little bit."
• "Sara's shoes are all at least one size too big for her, and so she wears two to three pairs of socks to compensate for the extra room. God knows why."
• "Sara has curly hair and so she has her hair thinned when she gets it cut. So do I."
• "Sara was diagnosed with asthma when she was seven and was restricted from reading the newspaper soon after until she was nine because she became a severe hypochondriac. (This was also in part because our mom let us watch America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. BIG MISTAKE.)"
• "Sara does not have a driver's license, which is kind of good 'cause she is not a particularly good driver."

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