Tennis- Young & Old

A Few Thoughts (Unedited) Posing As A Review Of The New Tennis Album, Young & Old


1) I found out today at work that I didn't get the assistant manager job I had more or less counted on getting because I've been there the longest and worked the hardest of all the applicants. But this is a cruel, unusual universe that I inhabit, and I've long since adapted to survive as the life-long-loser. For some reason the lyrics "we could be good but we don't live the way that we should" from this album seemed especially apt today. Especially after I spent most of the day playing loud, noisy shit like The Black Angels and Flux Information Sciences with the bass and treble cranked.


2) One of my good friend recently moved to Kansas to pursue further schooling. He and I are fans, if not advocates, for Tennis. In a recent email to me, he summed up how he felt about this record thusly: "I listened to the new Tennis album; it is kind of different from what they did before, but I still think it is a good sophomore album." Pat, I couldn't have said it better myself.


3) I all-too-frequently go through periods of time where I feel an overwhelming apathy and negativity about a lot of things in my life. I end up listening to the first two Velvet Underground albums, when I normally only regularly enjoy their last two (post-Lou Reed VU isn't really VU, man). People try to cheer me up and, while it kind of annoys me because I wish people would commiserate instead of playing the "glass is half full" card so soon, I know, deep down, that they're right. In the same way, then, I know that I was wrong to underrate the first Tennis album when I reviewed it, and I also know that I'm right in declaring Young & Old a good sophomore album.


Oh wait, he just said that.


Um, let's see here.


4) Young & Old is smartly (and perhaps rightly) similar enough to their debut, while making some changes, to succeed mightily. This is especially key since this only follows Cape Dory by about a year, and I'd have been more than pleased if they'd turned in a similar-but-equally-good sophomore effort instead. But no, Young & Old still has a pleasant retro early 60s rock/pop sound with a little less overt surf influence; less sailing/nautical imagery, too, though travel as a concept still features prominently, such as on, you guessed it, 'Traveling.' 


5) Think of a slightly more fleshed out, full-band sounding version of Cape Dory with some new instruments and textures, and you've pretty much nailed Young & Old. It beefs up Tennis's sound in a way similar to The Shins' change from the classicist indie-pop of Oh, Inverted World to the power-pop, more muscular sounding Chutes Too Narrow.


6) I was watching a Beach House video earlier and it once more occurred to me that the reason my (male) friends and I react so strongly to bands like Tennis, She & Him, and Beach House in that we all want women to promise the kind of poetical romance and dedication that normally only men will sing about and/or offer their partners. I know I'm always on the other side of the losing equation, pining after women or wishing they would never leave my side...and then here's a bunch of women in amazing bands singing those same things to me. If that makes me sound pathetic and creepy, I suppose it will have to. I love Young & Old but I've been programmed to, I think.


7) I love that every song on this record is between 3:02 and 3:45 in length. Tennis are a very three minute song kind of band. I respect such inadvertent consistency. Their next release should be a concept album about the number 3, or maybe do it like i by the Magnetic Fields and have every song start with 3. Just a thought.

Tennis- Cape Dory

Ever since discovering The Walkmen and picking up on the surf rock influences in their music, it's as if I'm waking up to an entire sub-set of the current indie scene who also draw from this seemingly dated sub-genre. Bands as diverse as Beach Fossils, Surfer Blood, and now Tennis are proving that surf rock doesn't need to be a kitschy footnote in music history. Still, Cape Dory as a piece of music threatens to be overcome by the story of its creation as well as its style.

The husband and wife creative core of Tennis sailed around for seven months after they graduated college, giving them a wealth of experiences and stories that proved hard to relate properly to their friends yet also perfect music fodder. After all, 20 somethings like your's truly can't really relate to docking in South Carolina or being stuck somewhere on the ocean for awhile due to the changing of the tides. But when set to music, these stories become enchanting, the sense of journey and discovery somehow more easy to relate to your own life. Yet the ease and lightness of Tennis's sound--a sort of easy listening, 70s AM radio, breezy surf rock blend of keyboards, guitar, and drums--could be a whimsical, affected distraction for many listeners. The album cover is terrible, going a few steps too far into irony or kitsch, while the title track is an idyllic daydream that most listeners only wish they had the money and opportunity to experience: sailing around on the Atlantic and Pacific with your husband, constantly experiencing the beauty of nature? Must be nice! Considering that the band are originally from Colorado, their story and music seem even less authentic, as if they went on that sailing trip just so they could have a quirky story to tell and a justification for their adopted musical style, two things that would set them apart from the bunch.

It pleases me, then, to say that none of this really had any bearing whatsoever on the album and my enjoyment of it. My enthusiasm for Cape Dory has cooled a bit since first stumbling upon it, but it is still an excellent, if modest, record of summery pop. Less than a half hour long, the songs rarely stray from the same nautical/traveling subject matter or the sure-to-be-dubbed-by-many-critics-and-fans "sail rock" sound. The tom toms and up-and-down rhythm guitar of 'Bimini Bay' give it a pleasant drift, and you can practically feel the ship rolling in the gentle mid-afternoon waves beneath you. Meanwhile, the sublime 'Pigeon' could easily pass for a mid-60s girl group ballad with a surf rock twist, not unlike if Brian Wilson had formed the Beach Girls instead of Boys. Due partially to its brevity, Cape Dory is the kind of record that you can leave on in your car for a few days, one that goes down with such smooth ease it's hard to take it seriously even though you can't stop listening to it.

As with Vampire Weekend, it's easy to charge Tennis with being privileged white people who co-opted a sound for their own devices. But the proof is always in the music, and playing the authenticity game is a fool's errand with the way the music world operates now. So, then: Vampire Weekend's albums are amazing, and Cape Dory is pretty good. Again, as with Vampire Weekend's albums, I don't know why something so obviously summery and light was released in January, but that's not relevant to its quality. I am left wishing there were a couple more songs, or for more variety, but those issues will be more important for their sophomore album. For now, provided you're into 70s soft-rock mixed with surf rock, this is a good little record, one that instantly wins you over but leaves you feeling a little hungry for something more.

4 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5