We’re the type who can’t help but get critical…
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[5.88]
Elisabeth Sanders: Before I heard this song, I (a bad lesbian, apparently) didn’t know the premise of Tegan and Sara’s upcoming album — songs the two wrote in high school and recently rediscovered on old cassette tapes, re-recorded and slightly reworked. And, well, yeah, that’s what it sounds like — you can hear pop punk crawling its way into its ubiquitous early-aughts petulance with every sincere-but-slightly-whiny line. It radiates the adolescence of a very particular time in every earnest guitar strum, awkward line scansion and yearning lyric. It’s sitting at the back of the bus with your discman thinking man, someday you’re gonna get OUT of this town. Tegan and Sara have obviously evolved — and improved — tremendously as songwriters since they were teens, but there’s something very pure about going back to that moment, not as an elevated nostalgic reproduction, but to the actual, embarrassing, squeaky heart of it.
[6]
Kalani Leblanc: I have no nostalgic attachment to Tegan and Sara, making it hard to find a redeemable point to this song. Reworked or not, the production and lyrics still ring immature and dated. Maybe I’m not the right person to have an opinion on this because I just found out they’re twins (TWINS?????) but I’m having a hard time not imagining “I’ll Be Back Someday” in a straight-to-DVD teen movie mall sequence. This fact is one they’re completely aware of, and they’re marketing the track as exactly that, but this doesn’t make me miss 2008, high school, or images of high school in 2008 (if anything, I’m now thankful it’s over if this is what it had to offer). Some things are best kept to yourselves, Sara and Tegan.
[3]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This has all the awkward phrasing I associate with early Tegan and Sara (charming except on the second verse, which just feels contrived), and the chug of those guitars is a welcome pivot from the synthy morass that the duo had immersed themselves in. The hook itself is compelling, the kind of desperate plea that the sisters’ voices carry so well. Yet the whole thing feels a little hollow, possibly due to the conceit of the project: how would you sound singing your teenage drafts in your late 30s?
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Incredibly precocious hook-writing for a couple of teenage kids! Lyrics, not so much. I generally love artists covering their juvenilia, but the effect relies on there being the juvenilia public, to have listened to. And even as juvenilia goes, this is no “Raise the Roses.”
[6]
Alfred Soto: They mastered this queer power pop. Now they’ll die with it.
[5]
Ian Mathers: Heartthrob was and is great, but I can’t pretend for a second to be disappointed with this return to angsty power pop. Now, if they can figure out how to integrate the two…
[7]
Will Adams: As much as I still enjoy Heartthrob, it wasn’t long before Tegan and Sara’s synthpop era became watered down pleasantness, as was the case with so many Greg Kurstin collabs of this nature. This return to power pop is heartening, both as an electrifying return to form and a nod to the duo’s origins. Because it’s an early song, there’s some writing oddities they’ve since outgrown, like the awkward melisma in the drawn out “lie.” But there’s still plenty to latch onto, like the infectious “Run! Run! Run! Run!” chorus that recalls “Back In Your Head.”
[7]
Vikram Joseph: Reading that Tegan and Sara’s forthcoming album would consist of reconstructed versions of songs and lyrics from their teenage years was anxiety-inducing in several ways — not just because it stoked concerns that they might be running short of ideas, but also because I love the 2013-present era of the band so goddamn much and taking several steps backwards seemed, well, regressive. I hoped, though, that their charm would sell their teenage dreams and adolescent trauma without it feeling recycled, and for the most part it does, aided and abetted by deliciously crunchy production (which never shies away from the electronic pop touches that defined Heartthrob and Love You To Death) and the obvious sixth sense for pop songwriting they’ve developed over the decades. The verses bubble and foam like a frothy sea, the chorus locks itself into a headlong pop-punk death spiral, and the way they stretch out “to the end, my friend, oh what a LIII-I-III-I-IIIIIIE!” sparks so much joy. The lyrics, inevitably, lack the sharp, poignant detail of much of their recent work, but “I’ll Be Back Someday” is just a great deal of fun, and that’s reassuring enough for now.
[7]