Tegan and Sara at Astra

You don’t say no to Tegan and Sara. Thursday night I grabbed Sara and headed to Astra Berlin. The place was packed—Tokyo Hotel haircuts, girls all over each other, the coat check line stretching forever. One thing was obvious right away: those two Canadian sisters aren’t indie weirdos anymore. The mainstream has them.

They wouldn’t let me bring my cola in, and the coat check lady wasn’t going to budge on it, so we stood outside with beers watching Astronautalis, this American rapper who was actually funny—these wild stories about drugs, his face getting redder and redder like he was about to have a stroke—and somehow he managed to win over even the most hardened hardcore women in that place. Sara grabbed his merch. If you ever catch him live, do it. You won’t stop laughing.

Tegan and Sara played through this nice mix of songs, old and new stuff from Sainthood, told some funny stories about being teenagers and doing drugs, and then Sara mentioned she’d dated a boy when she was 13. The crowd lost it. Pure anger, pure betrayal. You’d think she’d committed a crime. Les Mads had done a video interview with them earlier. By the time we left my legs were completely destroyed. I could barely walk. Next time I’m bringing a folding chair.