Monday 26 October 2009

Tegan and Sara: Hell


Sharing a hotel room with siblings is never easy. As Tegan and Sara show us in their new video for “Hell” though, having your own room can be no better.

“I’ve always wanted to shoot in a motel,” director Jamie Travis says in a making-of video for the Sainthood single. “We were originally going to build a set [but] this location lent itself to doing something in a set-like fashion with the wall in the middle. I’ve always liked the idea of Tegan and Sara having a tug-of-war.”

The tug-of-war takes place through the wall with rope provided by a flower-clad mirror monster. Yes, it’s a trifle confusing, but the twins’ new-wave Elvis hair couldn’t be more right.

“I haven’t had so many bobby-pins in my hair since prom,” Sara wrote on the band’s website. She added that Travis “has a head chock full of absurd and wonderful ideas. Ropes, fortune tellers, paper cuts and pompadours.”

Tegan puts it more simply in the making-of: “I can’t even really tell you what the hell it’s about. It isn’t about anything, it feels like.”

She's right. Unlike Friday’s intricately-crafted “Charlie Darwin” video, plot seems to be a foreign concept here. While it’s tough not to enjoy video of Tegan Sara acting their silly selves, this series of random images seems to form no coherent whole, for the viewer or the artists.

“The video will probably be studied for decades in film school,” Tegan said, “but no one who sees it on the internet will understand it.” She may be on to something.

Verdict: 2/5 stars



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