High School – Tegan & Sara

In High School, their first memoir, twins Sara Quin and Tegan Quin, known professionally as the band Tegan & Sara, look back on their high school years in Calgary.  The sisters switch off chapters, telling the stories of their first loves, parties and drug use, and the discovery of their step-dad’s guitar and the start of their musical journeys.  After playing for their friends, they enter a music competition while still in high school and win, putting them on the path to stardom.

I first became acquainted with Tegan & Sara back in the early 2000s, when one of the tracks from their third album started getting a little radio airplay.  While their more recent work has moved into a style that doesn’t really work for me, those early works, especially 2004’s So Jealous, remain some of my favorites.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, but it is basically like reading the shared diary of two sisters who find themselves on different, but similar, paths heading to the same destination.  They don’t shy away from the sibling rivalries that caused many a fight between the two, but they managed to always find their way back to each other and, eventually, to their music.

While writing this book, they found their old homemade demo cassettes of songs they wrote while they were in high school.  Their latest album is them partially re-writing and then recording those songs.  Reading the book has rekindled my interest in their music and I am tempted to check out this album.  Time will tell if I follow through with that or not.