Consumer Guide Album

Tegan and Sara: Crybaby [Mom + Pop, 2022]
Simple and often schematic, which suits both their terse wit and their bottomless tune sense, almost every relationship described, referenced, or just evoked on this lesbian sister duo's 10th album seems to go wrong in one of an unspectacular variety of small but decisive ways. After a quarter century in the biz, that's almost their signature. You'd never know unless you were part of their sizable fanbase that both identical twins had long since left Canada for California, that both are married, or that one recently bore a son who when you think about it may have inspired this album's otherwise enigmatic title. They're that subtle, that indirect, that confessional-or-maybe-not. It would be stupid to deny their level of craft. But how much that means you have to like it is up to you. B+