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Anyone who has been to or read about a Tegan and Sara concert is well aware of their live-setting schtick. The duo don’t so much hold concerts as travelling slumber parties; giddy tweens and their parents cram in next to respectable aficionados like me for big, fat living room gossip sessions—last Saturday night, the State Theatre downtown made for one hell of a living room.

 

Said Sara of her ornate surroundings, “This looks like a don’t-swear-or-you’ll-get-fined kind of venue.”

 

Making their second Minneapolis stop in just a few months, the songstress siblings turned out a lively, good-natured rock show. The set ignited with the infectious shoegazer number “You Wouldn’t Like Me,” and stomped on with rocked-up versions of familiar album tracks. Their tour setup, most often featuring three guitars, a bass and drums, with analog-style keys tossed in for good measure, kept things loud but not overbearing. Tegan took to the keyboards for the delay-drenched “Burn Your Life Down,” one of the night’s first indications that the pair are at their best when channeling the gloomy new-wave sauce.

 

Throughout the night, the artists formerly known as Sara and Tegan lived up to their rep for voluble onstage banter, sometimes false-starting in order to play with the crowd. Early on, the twins pointed out a young child in the front row, bestowing upon her mad props for her bravery in attending. As the night progressed, topics spanned from Sara’s supposed frigidity, to the sisters’ tongue-in-cheek trauma brought about by childhood outings with their father on barely-frozen lakes.

 

If there’s one thing Tegan and Sara know besides yakking, it’s musical brevity. Perhaps not since The Cars has a band so consistently delivered such tasty alt-pop morsels, fat trimmed and bullshit discarded. Lengthy intros are swapped in favor of extra-spicy hooks and tunes rise to abrupt endings that, brilliantly, leave the audience drooling for another hit. So it was with radio favorites like “Hop a Plane” and This Business of Art throwback “Superstar,” a number which ironically sounded fresher than many of the newer numbers (its hook being the pseudo-hip-hop chant “hardcore superstar by far”).

 

The 28-year-old sisters, whose twinness allows each to enjoy a nearly perfect vocal double, forged ahead despite moronic shouts from the audience. (“Tegan, make my babies!” To which Tegan replied, “No.” Talk about barking up the wrong tree.)Instead, they offered up the Cure-like “Like O, Like H” and the anthemic title track to 2004’s So Jealous.

 

The sweet “I’ve Got You” got off to a rough start when a random audience member began yelling, “Fargo!” Tegan spent several minutes attempting to decipher the meaning behind the shout-out, only to hilariously conclude, “Oh, you’re just drunk.”

 

The set concluded with the rumbling drum line of “Nineteen,” the pleading “Where Does the Good Go?” and crowd favorite “The Con.” After a brief exit—Tegan dryly stated they would walk off stage briefly, hold for applause, then return—the encore peaked with “Fix U Up” and the ever-bouncy, after-school-piano strains of “Back in Your Head.”

 

Forever conscious of their audience, Tegan and Sara stooped at the edge of the stage to sign autographs for the little girl, then departed.