Ryan Adams + Tegan and Sara

Ryan Adams has been loud and grumpy in recent days, so on this last night of his solo acoustic tour in Portland, Oregon you’ve got to wonder — who is this guy? He’s cracking jokes, he’s bloated, he’s wearing a three-piece suit. Fans of Adams’ first band Whiskeytown must feel like they’ve entered a trippy fun-house — where our main attraction is revered by Sir Elton John, courted by Winona Ryder, splashed on the pages of US magazine. His days of obscurity long gone, Adams is a guy on a bender with a viewing audience of millions. Along the East Coast tour stops, fans have been baiting Adams with shouts for the Bryan Adams hit “Summer of 69” (get it?) after stories of a fan-kicked-out for such shenanigans caught fire and became the stuff of Internet legend (Adams was sure to refund the ticket price, what a guy). And from there it got worse — Detroit, New York, everyone else got Morose Boy. But not Portland. Portland’s been a fertile breeding ground for hipsters, but tonight the Roseland Theatre feels like a tame sorority party. Where are the same music geeks who throw down twenty bucks for Wilco or Sonic Youth? The place feels like a Dixie Chicks concert. Is it the steep ticket price in a hard-hit local economy? Is it the implied sobriety of a sit-down show? Or maybe the absence of cool kids signals a rejection from the DIY crowd. Portland is, after all, a very small city, with small city hang-ups. Commercial success and artistic integrity are strange and ill-fated bedfellows around here — with Cobain’s implosion permanently burrowed in our memory banks. Ryan Adams is on a proud and loud excessive journey to the middle — and tonight’s audience shows it. Yeah, there’s weirdness in the Roseland tonight. It’s hard to connect these people with Adams’ early days in the alt-country North Carolina music scene. Where’s the ‘alt’? Tonight our fix comes not from Ryan Adams — but from the unlikeliest of places — two girls with guitars. Meet Tegan and Sara. Twenty-one-year-old Canadian popsters singing about their (ex-)girlfriends with a look that screams Chrissie Hynde and a sexy sound dressed in sighs and decadent hooks, the musical twins seem to have gloriously bypassed the post-Lilith ditch dug by surface-skimming bores. Where Ryan Adams’ fans want to throw their shirts at him, Tegan and Sara’s fans want to become them. Think Sleater-Kinney — but, uh, twin sisters. The boys get off, well — because they’re boys. The girls get off, wondering which sister they like more, or are more like. Because it’s rock n’ roll, we swing from idolizing our heroes to emulating them, taking on their swagger and becoming them, in a way that remains untouched by the stain of Real Life. Pre-teen days and nights spent practicing, twin-telepathy, whatever — Tegan and Sara have made a hell-of-a-second record. Less folky than their debut (This Business of Art),If It Was You pairs the girls up with New Pornographers John Collins and Dave Carswell. The result is a rougher sound, raw and distorted. Just barely of drinking age, the sisters aren’t here to make us any wiser. And they’re not staking bold claims in the pop music land mass. Tegan and Sara’s music isn’t really revolutionary in its construction or execution. But the girls know a good moment — and are surprisingly original in their reinvention of The Great Pop Song. With soaring double vocals and a pop-punk swirl of electric and acoustic guitars, the twins give us the sweet and the ugly of early (queer) romance — the nauseating crush, the consummation, the declarations and promises, the bed-death, the post-breakup psychotics. From the looks of it, Adams genuinely loves Tegan and Sara’s stuff. Taking a breather from the white-hot-spotlight to join the girls on bass and electric guitar, Adams appears (gasp!) humble. Tonight he’s deferential, tonight he wants us to believe that, dude — he’s like, a fan. If only we could believe him. This is a guy constantly validating his mojo with his audience, so much so that it’s hard to place his art (and undeniable talent) amidst the noise of his persona. He’s no longer recognizable to us, or maybe even to himself. And on a stage carefully tended to (with a turntable and the first Ramones record in plain sight), you get the feeling that Tegan and Sara might just be another prop. In all of tonight’s extremes and posturing, there’s a rare moment of honesty from Adams — it comes when he riles the crowd to call Tegan and Sara back for an encore. Sitting in on bass for an ’80s cover (“I Ran (So Far Away)” by Flock of Seagulls ), Adams is off-key and flubbing lyrics. It’s the only wrong note he plays all night. He may want you to think he’s sloppy-drunk, but he’s actually a control-freak thinly disguised. Except for this moment with Tegan and Sara. In this moment, he’s real — his guard is down. And what a trio they make: two sisters, earnest and bright-eyed, on the verge of breaking through, and a pasty Rock Star caught in his ironic moment of mass acceptance. Surreal and strange indeed — let’s hope there’s more where that came from.