Tegan and Sara at Pier 26

Tegan Quin and Sara Quin are 32-year-old identical twins from Canada and they are both gay. Once you get past that, we can move on and talk about the music. The duo started playing guitar and writing songs at age 15, and released a debut album independently in 1999. Tegan and Sara’s music was the kind of indie-folk one might easier hear in small clubs like the Living Room. With its seventh and most successful album, Heartthrob, which was released in January, the duo reinvented itself to become very much a pop band.

At Pier 26 tonight, Tegan and Sara appeared small in front of a video backdrop that featured a variety of quickly-moving graphics, including spilling ink and tearing paper, that often spelled out partial lyrics of the songs being performed. Both are known to be talkers and story-tellers, and this they did again amply, charming the large audience that had primarily come to see the headliner, fun. With a full band behind them, the twins straddled between old and new songs, enough that one could hear the folk roots, but it was the dynamic energy of the newer teen-pop material that clinched the performance and won over new fans. Tegan and Sara are having fun (pardon the pun) with this tour; one might wonder if the sisters will ever scale back their music again.