GO TWINS

The new challenge of being five-foot-four at a rock show is that not only do you have to tiptoe and lean and sway to get a glimpse between and around shoulders, hairdos, other hulking human obstacles; now you also have to eye-dodge a million tiny screens being lofted to capture the stage action, or else resign yourself to watching the entire show through them. You have to tune them out like blinking banner ads. Except this is a live show, not the internet, and there should not be little LCD banner ads hovering in and around the audience.

My horse is not so high; I snapped a handful of pictures myself tonight, all of which turned out useless. But the brawny dude in front of me would hold up his camera to film entire songs, bulky elbows winging outward and further slashing up the meager view. At some point, it crosses over into light pollution. Now that smoking is banned, this is the new secondhand.

OK, show report: Tegan and Sara are like Our Own Backstreet Boys. I only mean this in terms of the audience reaction, which was jelly-kneed, high-pitched, constant screams. Anything T&S said, the crowd screamed at. People even screamed while they were speaking. I thought the girl behind me was going to go into seizures when they launched into whatever that last song was. ("Living Room"?) I would not be surprised one bit to hear reports of crying and fainting in the front.

They are incredibly cute and charismatic onstage, jokey and Canadian-accented. And their voices live are more differentiated and more interesting than they are all layered up on record. Sara's voice is like a shard of glass. Very New Wave. Tegan has a richer voice with a great scuffed-up edge. She slowed down "Soil, Soil" and "Call It Off" and you could hear her voice stretch and fill the space. I'd like to hear her do a Cat Power kind of project.

Megan took some beautiful pictures at some secret early thing they did earlier in the day at Mississippi Studios, up on her sumptuous photo-blog.