Graphic by Vivian MacPherson ’23
I fell in love with the music of indie pop duo Tennis in high school, back when my older brother’s cool girlfriend was their biggest (and it felt like only) fan. Their albums earned regular spots in my CD rotation and YouTube history — I loved that every song created an atmosphere, told a story and was infinitely listenable.
The Denver husband and wife duo, Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, have since gained a wide following for their signature airy beach pop. Moore and Riley met in college and started making music after returning from an eight-month sailing trip. Their synth-y, sunny first album “Cape Dory” documented the experience and introduced a powerhouse creative partnership to the indie music scene. Tennis released their fifth album, “Swimmer,” on Valentine’s Day, reminding devoted listeners of the romance that gave them their start.
Tennis pre-released the first dreamy single, “Runner,” off of “Swimmer” in November and I listened to it nonstop. A mellow opening guitar riff rises to the soulful singable chorus that had my arms drifting up from my sides to sway about my dorm room. Its accompanying music video has the willowy Moore debuting a new cropped haircut for her tight blonde curls, an update to her distinctive 70s glam look. Moore dances with alternating camp and grace, in one shot snapping with sarcastic stiffness and in the next fluidly two-stepping across the frame. Her outfits change too, from monochromatic pale yellow to pink as she moves through various fake-fabulous picture day backdrops. Though the star is glamorous and the music is seriously good, Tennis never takes themselves too seriously. Needless to say, I was excited to hear the rest of the album.
“Swimmer” doesn’t disappoint on fantasy or substance. Unsurprisingly, I like every song, but the first track, “I’ll Haunt You,” is perhaps my favorite and has indeed been haunting me since I heard it. It starts as a ballad — Moore’s voice accompanied only by a melancholy piano line — then turns into a bop. It’s got everything I crave from Tennis: impressive vocals, drama and powerful, poetic lyrics.
“Need Your Love” is an inversion of “I’ll Haunt You” that starts fast and then slows for the chorus, mixing earnest vocals with a great bass line and drum beat. Moore and Riley play with tempo and the song is choppy, piecing together several seemingly incongruous musical fragments that still work wonders together.
What I’ve always loved about Tennis is their ability to meld young and old — aptly also the name of their 2012 second studio album. Songs off “Swimmer” sound like the bedroom pop adaptations of 70s pop and folk love songs.
“I like to linger with the things that I love, and I like to explore the different iterations of them,” Moore recently explained to Interview Magazine. “We are rather rooted in the 60s, 70s genres, but I’ve found within that there’s everything on the spectrum, from folk to psych-rock to early electronic music. It can be natural sounding, or there can be synthesizers and drum machines. I don’t feel like there’s any limitation sonically.”
“Swimmer” is a collection of love songs, nostalgia and romance guiding songwriter Moore’s lyrics. “Echoes” is bittersweet and confessional: “Suddenly I’m thirty-three / and on a gurney,” Moore laments over lost time.
“Suddenly I have certainty / when you hold my hand,” she sings sweetly in “Matrimony II,” possibly the continuation of “Matrimony,” one of my favorite’s from the group’s 2017 “Yours Conditionally” album. Whereas “Matrimony” told the story of the couple’s union, “Matrimony II,” with the chorus “By my side in every kind of weather / I’ll never be the same / I could never find something better / I even changed my name,” reflects on Riley and Moore’s continued passion 10 years of marriage later.
Moore confirmed that the album comes from difficult emotions. “Because Patrick’s dad died while we were touring, we ended up thrown into a situation where music became our catharsis in a literal sense, almost out of necessity,” she told Interview Magazine. So the two returned to the place where it all started: “we decided to go back to our boat for the initial stages of writing, mostly because we both feel like it’s hard to trust ourselves or to be in touch with our own instincts as writers unless we’re pretty disconnected from what’s going on in the world,” she added.
With “Swimmer,” Tennis continues to craft a signature sound on songs that melt together but remain distinctly magnificent.
“I’ve set a goal for myself to try and do more storytelling with my lyrics and to think of a song as a short story instead of a poem,” Moore said to Interview Magazine. Moore has achieved this sonic storytelling goal on “Swimmer,” once again leading listeners to sail away with her and Riley.