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Jul 09, 2019 Tegan and Sara By Christopher Roberts

Tegan and Sara, sisters Tegan and Sara Quin, have announced a new album, Hey, I’m Just Like You, that features them reworking old unreleased songs they originally wrote in high school and were thought lost for over 20 years. It is due out September 27 via Sire, only three days after the release of their first memoir, High School, which is due out September 24 via MCD, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux (and Simon & Schuster in Canada and Virago in the UK). They have shared a trailer for Hey, I’m Just Like You. Watch it below, followed by the cover art for the album.

The band discovered 40 songs they wrote in high school. “While working on our memoir, we discovered lost cassette tapes that had been unheard for over 20 years,” says Tegan in a press release. “They contained dozens of our first songs, written between the ages of 15 and 17…we immediately recognized the songs as an essential part of our high school story.”

“With only minor tweaks to lyrics and structure, we tried to remain true to the original essence of each song,” adds Sara.

Hey, I’m Just Like You was recorded in Vancouver, Canada in April and May 2019. A press release points out that it is “the first Tegan and Sara album created with a team of all women.” This includes producer Alex Hope (Troye Sivan, Broods), Rachael Findlen (engineer), Beatriz Artola (mixing), Emily Lazar (mastering), Annie Kennedy (assistant engineer), Carla Azar (drums), and Catherine Hiltz (bass).

Tegan and Sara sum up Hey, I’m Just Like You with this press release statement: “This is the record we never could have made as teenagers, full of songs we never could have written as adults.”

The band also issued this longer statement about the album on Instagram: “Last year while writing our new memoir, we came across two cassette tapes with dozens of songs we wrote in high school. Defiant and melodramatic, the songs captured the exultation and grief of first loves, first losses, ecstatic kiss-offs, and psychedelic tributes to the friendships we had as teenagers. It had been over twenty years since we had heard the songs and quite honestly, we both expected to listen once, cringe, and bury them for another couple decades. But they were good. Like, really good. They were raw, and in some cases the lyrics were hard to decipher. But the melodies, the honesty in the words, and the joy listening to them after all these years was undeniable. We decided immediately that those songs were the demos we’d use to build the new Tegan and Sara record. Hey, I’m Just Like You has twelve songs, but in making those twelve songs we pulled sections from nearly twenty of those lost high school demos. We kept the original lyrics where we could, and we only wrote four new sections. In some cases, Sara sings songs I wrote, and in other cases I sing songs she wrote. For the first time ever, we share vocal duties on a handful of songs making them the first truly ‘Tegan AND Sara’ songs. Alex Hope produced the record in Vancouver, where we recorded this past April and May. It is also the FIRST Tegan and Sara album produced, performed, engineered, mixed, and mastered by a team of all women.”

When High School was announced it was dubbed “the origin story of Tegan and Sara.” It recounts their high school years, with alternating chapters written by each sister.

Here’s how the previous press release described the book: “High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of the identical twins from Calgary, Alberta. It follows Tegan and Sara as they grew amid grunge and rave culture in the ‘90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents’ divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan’s point of view and Sara’s, the book is a raw account of the music, drugs, alcohol, love and friendship they explored in their formative years. A transcendent story of first loves and first songs, it captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from one another. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara.”

Tegan and Sara previously offered this joint statement about the book: “How did you start your band? When did you know that you were gay? What were you like before Tegan and Sara? We have spent 20 years answering those complicated questions with simple answers. Writing High School gives us the opportunity to tell the intricate stories that shaped our relationship as sisters, musicians, and queer girls.”

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