TEGAN AND SARA - Hey I’m Just Like You LP (Yellow Vinyl)

Label: Sire

If any artists can handle vulnerable teenage writing with care and respect, it’s the Quin sisters, and with their latest album, they prove they’re still up to the task. They’ve been tackling and balancing overwhelming desire, agony, heartbreak, and confusion since they began their careers nearly two decades ago. With Hey, I’m Just Like You, the structural openness is still there; however, since it’s written by teens, it’s just a bit more concentrated and shameless.

“Hello, I’m Right Here” and “Please Help Me” capture fear and confusion in a gentle and stripped-down way, as does album closer “All I Have to Give the World Is Me”, which Sara accurately describes in album notes as “brutally earnest.” It will have you in tears while remembering what it felt like to be young and brave, saying what you feel without artifice. Presented as verbatim reproductions, the songs on ‘Hey, I’m Just Like You’ would function as a pile of dogeared artists sketchbooks – but picked up again and turned into hefty indie-pop bangers, this serves as an honest, vulnerable, and occasionally brutal reminder of what Tegan and Sara have always been best at.