Writing their first album at high tide on a sailing adventure along the Atlantic Coast, Tennis are the dreamy duo, turned trippy trio, re-working classic jive music for young lovers.
Buying a boat and taking off into the sunset with only each other for company, Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore never really expected to officially release the music they lazily composed together. First writing debut LP ‘Cape Dory’ (released earlier this year) as a means of documenting all they saw on the eight month adventure, the pair put out their finger-clicking good tunes via their Myspace and the blog-o-sphere went mad for it. Hardly able to believe the impact their anonymously titled project had, the young couple began to take their surf-pop sound a bit more seriously, enlisting the help of a third member on drums, James, a faithful old school friend.
Now back with their second album, the new material offers an insight into the intimacies all three friends have shared growing up together. Alania comments: “I usually wait for the song to have some sort of a mood in general to dictate what the lyrics will be. But this time I felt the need to explore more and I got excited about more impersonal things, rather than different states of being and feeling. We didn’t want to be restrictive over our themes with this album.”
i-D online caught up with the All-American tag team to chat Desert Island Discs and funk jazz.
If you were stuck out at sea which top 5 records would you hope to save from the wreckage as your Desert Island Discs?
1. Pretenders – Pretenders
2. Brenda Lee – Best of
3. Grandaddy – Sophtware Slump
4. Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
5. Joe Meek – various recordings
