Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CVIII--Tegan and Sara: Walking with a Ghost

On this dreariest of days (both politically and weather-wise) for a bit of levity you can imagine the ghost you're walking with to be either the spectacular Obama Presidency or more depressingly, what's left of our democracy...

It's not often you get to write about a band that is lead by openly gay identical twin sisters from Canada--actually, it's never before--but that's what we have this week.  Twin sisters Tegan and Sara Quin have been making music since 1995 (when they were fifteen, for Christ's sake) and released their first studio album when they were both nineteen years old in 1999.  Over the years they have released eight studio albums, had a top three record on the Billboard 200, been nominated for a couple of Grammy's, been nominated for and won several Juno's (for those forgetful sorts, that's the Canadian equivalent of our Grammy's), and are quite the prolific touring band.  They've also somehow managed to find time for politics in both Canada and their sometime home here in the U.S., fighting for, among others, gay rights, musical education, literacy, and cancer research.  Well, done, ladies!

Released as a single in 2005 from their So Jealous LP, "Walking with a Ghost" may well be the Green Eggs and Ham of pop music, using only 24 words (though repeated often) in two minutes and thirty two seconds.  Musically, it's about as simple--it starts with some short acoustic guitar bursts with a little drumming, and leads into some short electric guitar bursts with a little drumming.  The vocals have a little (and believe me, too much would have killed it) eighties pop vibe with their reverberations and robot-like cadence,  In a word or two, it's catchy as all hell--between the guitars and the music and the vocals it's all but impossible not to sing along and shake your booty just a bit while you're doing it.

[Aside:  For those interested, The White Stripes did a cover version of "Walking with a Ghost" about a year after Tegan and Sara released the original--while I can't say I like it as much as the original, if you're an aficionado (as I am) of Jack White's guitar playing he does a nice take on the song's guitar line (can be found here)]

Rap sheet:  (Uh, kind of hard to find anything that stands out in such a brief set of lyrics) "I was walking with the ghost/I said please please don't insist..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee