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This was our December 2007 cover story. Click here to download a copy of the original BLAST cover!

Sara Quin wouldn’t want to date herself. Or any other musician, for that matter.

The 27-year-old songstress — one twin sister half of indie pop darlings Tegan and Sara — drew inspiration from a struggling relationship for songs she contributed to the group’s latest release, The Con. Over quirky pop melodies, Sara’s lyrics candidly detail her self-described inadequate relationship skills in songs like “Relief Next to Me” (”I’m not proud that nothing will seem easy about me”) and first single “Back in Your Head” (”I’m not unfaithful, but I’ll stray”).

The latter half of the duo discussed her relationship insecurities during an interview on a break from a recent tour stop in Chicago. She touched on the band’s rabid international fan base, her love/hate relationship with their early albums and the link between their live shows and dental hygiene.

“You have to be a very patient, gentle kind person to date me,” Sara admits. “I could never date me. I could never date a musician. I just don’t feel like I could, ever. It seems so contradictory (but) I actually do feel really private and so it scares me to think that someone would have so much power to be able to create music and art from our relationship.”

“And yet, I do it all the time,” she acknowledges with a laugh. “I find that I’m not writing songs as the bad thing is happening or as the disconnect is happening, so a lot of times it’s really sort of like a retrospect thing. So I don’t feel like it’s as difficult on people as you would think just because it’s like, you’ve already gone through the rough period and then you’re writing the song. But I try to be very responsible and respectful of the things that I’m writing about. I don’t want the person that I’m writing about to feel like I’ve like exposed them.”

Even at just 27, Tegan and Sara are industry veterans. The Con is their fifth full-length album.

Since they were teenagers, the Quin twins have adopted a do-it-yourself approach that’s involved relentless touring, grassroots self-promotion and documenting their recording and touring processes for their fans through DVDs and online videos. Their persistence paid off when they were signed as teens to Neil Young’s label, Vapor Records.

Since the release of 2004’s So Jealous, which is widely viewed as the band’s breakthrough album, Tegan and Sara’s popularity has been on a steady incline. They landed a major label deal with Warner Brothers Records for The Con, which was released in July.

“Personally, I love making music, and I love the industry part of making music,” Sara says. “For me, the industry is not record labels and TV and money and MTV and whatever. It’s just the day to day of what we do and how we make this world work and how we have been able to build a career independently.”

That career started with demo tapes that evolved into 1999’s Under Feet Like Ours, the siblings’ first full-length album. That record, and the next year’s follow-up This Business of Art, are marked by gritty vocals (”We screamed a lot; we were angsty,” Sara explains) and folky guitar strumming, with influences like Bruce Springsteen and Ani DiFranco clearly discernible. Eight years later, The Con is laden with keyboards, synthesizers and polished vocal layering courtesy of producer and Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla.

Unschooled listeners probably wouldn’t realize that it’s the same girls performing.

“I definitely think there’s been a huge evolution … in terms of musical sound or style,” Sara says. “Now we’re more just a traditional rock band, pop band.”

Part of that evolution is thanks to a new recording process Tegan and Sara adopted for The Con, creating demos at their respective homes in Vancouver and Montreal and e-mailing them back and forth to each other. The approach allowed them to become stronger songwriters and better self-editors through experimentation with different instrumental and vocal techniques, Sara said.

“When we were putting out our first albums … I would just write a song and then I would go into the studio and by the time you had time to listen to it, it was done,” she explained. “When I think of the band changing into what I sort of see us being now, I think that the big difference was we started recording ourselves.”

Patience seems to have paid off.

“And to be able to finally record what I was writing, and go have dinner, and then come back and put my headphones on and listen, I was really able to sort of put myself in the shoes of the people who were going to be listening to the music. And I would really start to critique myself. I think it made me a stronger songwriter.”

The latest album, which was recorded in Walla’s Portland, Ore. studio, doesn’t stray too far from those original demos that Tegan and Sara put together, both have said. To round out their lineup for recording purposes, they recruited session musicians including AFI’s Hunter Bergan, The Rentals’ Matt Sharp on bass, and Walla’s Death Cab for Cutie bandmate Jason McGerr on drums. Longtime collaborator Ted Gowans also plays guitar on the record.

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Elizabeth Raftery is the managing editor of Blast. Follow her on Twitter.