Twin sisters Jessica and Sara Taddio have been making music for over a decade. The 25 year old musicians started taking singing and piano lessons, respectively, at 11 years old. They call themselves Idie and the Mirrors, inspired first by 70s star Edie Sedwick. “Mirrors” is self-explanatory: they’re twins, so even though they’re not identical mirror images of each other, they reflect off each other and draw inspiration off what they see around them, and these reflections make their way into their music.
Their music is fun and soulful indie-pop: girly and energetic, moody and melodious, all at once. Jessica’s voice is so versatile, Connor Seidel of Evermoor Audio, their producer, had plenty to work with. We sat down to talk to the ladies shortly before the release of their music video for their single Fall. Check it out below. Even though the girls aren’t identical twins, we challenge you to differentiate between the two in the music clip.
What is it like working together? Are there any times where being twin sisters gets in the way?
Both: All the time.
Jessica: It’s a challenge, but we’re sisters, so we always have to make it work. We lived together, so we know what sets each other off. When we were in bands with other people before, it lasted 3 months. Working with people is hard.
Sara: It’s harder to connect with people other than your own blood, but then again it’s easy to be explosive.
Jessica: We have no filter. We get into more fights, so the music sometimes turns into bickering.
Sara: But with age, we learned to compartmentalize. It’s a challenge. It’s not bad, but challenging.
Who are some of your musical inspirations?
Jessica: CHVRCHES, BANKS, Robyn. She’s one of my favourite vocalists in pop. Prince is really awesome too.
Sara: Sohn is amazing. James Blake. And no question like that should ever go without mentioning Beyonce.
Jessica: It’s always changing. That question is always so hard because we are always evolving.
What made you participate in CBC’s Rock Your Campus? How has the exposure helped you get your music out?
Sara: Our dad said we have to do this, but our dad says that with everything.
Jessica: But we were hesitant because we don’t like the idea of voting competitions.
Sara: Music isn’t a competition for us. Passions like sports you do to win, but I don’t think winning has anything to do with music. But that’s besides the point, because we did enter it, and it made us blow up. (Jessica: In a small scale. And we got a lot of positive feedback from our producer.) In the end we didn’t win, but it was very rewarding.
Jessica: We can be so caught up and scared in our heads and think that something like that is beneath us, but at the end of the day, it’s a platform to show ourselves.
Sara: We got to have an outlet to present our music in a more professional way than releasing on Facebook and we have had so much positive feedback.
What’s your favourite song on the EP? Why does it stand out?
Sara: Are We Winning: Everyone is going to hate this, but that’s why I love it. It’s very electro, and it was so much fun to play. The ones that like pop won’t necessarily like this; it’s fun but also moody. (Jessica: I don’t find it moody. Sara: You’re a totally moody girl in this song!) I love the lyrics. It’s all about being in your 20s and not knowing where you’re going: “fools together, friends forever.” Fall was always my favourite, but are we winning is the underdog and I’m going to stick by it.
Jessica: Beauty of Being Young because I’m such an 80s girl. Another favourite is Fall because of the production. We never thought we’d do something like that. We use a lot of vocal percussion, which was fun. Connor basically told me to “say weird sh*t” and then he made a beat out of it.
You’ve just released the music video for Fall. What was it like shooting a video for the first time?
Sara: Fall was originally written acoustically. In the studio, the production had so many layers because it’s a very large song. We wanted the video to be a musical representation of that. The sounds we were making in the production of the video and the imagery in the clip are very in-sync
Any other music videos in the works?
Sara: We need to do a show before we get ahead of ourselves.
Jessica: We have to actually be musicians in real life. We have to present ourselves. I think we’re starting something with Fall. In our next video, we would keep that whole kind of subtle and visually questionable motif. We wanted to focus on aesthetics. People are always on Tumblr, Instagram, social media. People are focusing on the aesthetics more than ever. We wanted to portray the electronic aesthetic that everyone knows.
What are your plans once you’ve released your EP?
Jessica: Hopefully a show, a well-planned show to showcase the EP, that was promised to everyone in our Indigogo campaign.
Sara: In our performances, we want to keep our namesake somehow, but nothing is set in stone. I go to museum exhibitions often to get inspired. There was this one exhibit a couple of months back that I went to. There were light bulbs all over this huge room with high ceilings, and when you put your hands on these handles, the light bulbs started flickering to your heart beat. Things that can visually touch you at our shows: that’s our next big project.
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