Tegan and Sara messed up big time when choosing opening band Diana for their LC Pavilion appearance Saturday night, but that didn’t stop the twins from giving one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.
While the show began with Diana giving a lackluster performance consisting of six songs and absolutely zero emotion, once its set ended and the main attraction, sisters Tegan and Sara Quin, took the stage, the crowd went wild enough to give me heart palpitations.
Tegan and Sara kicked off their portion of the show with “Back In Your Head,” a classic from their 2007 album “The Con” that immediately got the audience jumping to the beat. What Diana lacked in stage presence, Tegan and Sara made up for it in the first 30 seconds of the song and carried the energy through the entire night.
The headlining twins performed the songs in rapid succession, allowing little time for the audience to be bored in between. The show moved seamlessly from electronic-based pop songs to acoustic numbers and back again. I barely even blinked when the final chords of the song “How Come You Don’t Want Me” were fading into the ceiling of the venue before “Call It Off,” a tune of a much different sound, began.
Even though all of the songs Tegan and Sara performed were great – adding up to 20 without including the special encore performance – two songs stood out among them for the sheer amount of feeling they were performed with.
Halfway through the set, Tegan and Sara hit the audience with “Where Does The Good Go,” a throwback to the album “So Jealous” that made them a mainstay in music in 2004. Even though this is a song that they’ve been playing for nearly a decade, they haven’t let it become a burnt-out performance that they just want to get over with. They exuded just as much energy and passion with this song as they did with those from their most recent album, “Heartthrob” (2013).
The other standout song was the twins’ last performance before leaving the stage in preparation for an encore. “Closer” threw the song at the crowd in a haze of artificial fog and flashing lights, and at once the audience went wild.
When Tegan and Sara returned to the stage for their encore performance, they walked back out amid chants of song titles the audience members were hoping they would play (as well as a few screams requesting the removal of their pants). It seemed impossible that they would be able to accommodate the wishes of everyone in the crowd, but they did their best by performing a medley of older songs that the audience went crazy for.
Just like the rest of their show, the transitions between the snippets of each song were subtle and didn’t distract from the actual performance. Some of the songs included in the encore were “You Wouldn’t Like Me,” “We Didn’t Do It” and “I Know I Know I Know,” all songs from “So Jealous.”
The powerful voices of Tegan and Sara throughout the entire night didn’t seem to belong to these small, sprightly sisters, but every time they opened their mouths they commanded the massive audience of a 2200-seating, sold-out venue.