Tennis
Esplanade Theatre Studio/Last Friday
Tennis serve up images of sun, sea and surf with the laidback vibe of their retro pop.
It is not quite what one would expect given that the husband-and-wife duo of guitarist Patrick Riley and singer/key- boardist Alaina Moore are from Middle America Denver.
But they had taken a seven-month- long sailing expedition together and that trip has seeped thoroughly into their music.
You can practically smell the brine from the titles on their debut album Cape Dory (2011). From Seafarer to Waterbirds, the shore is never far away.
The chill and easy feel of their songs translated well to a live setting in which Moore and Riley were backed by a drummer and another guitarist.
Her voice tended to get overwhelmed by the music when she went for the low notes. But otherwise, her sweet-but- not-twee pipes, his Hawaiian shirt, the breezy melodies and the bouncy beats all helped to evoke a cosily specific time and space during the hour-long gig.
Tennis ventured further afield thematically on their second album Young & Old (2012) though they continued to play with a nostalgic pop sound.
There is more to them than nautical adventures even as the band remained on the move. Moore sang on It All Feels The Same: “Took a train to/Took a train to get to you”.
In between numbers, she did the talking. Referring to her mane of frizzy curls, she quipped at one point: “I hope you guys can appreciate what your weather does to my hair.
She had prepared some dance choreography for My Better Self but confessed that she “discovered the hard way” that she could not sing and groove at the same time. No matter, her fans were happy to see her self-described “high school dance talent show” moves.
There is a charming sunniness to their material that shines through even when the inspiration might have been something darker in the first place.
Moore explained that Marathon was one of the first songs they wrote and it came out of the scary experience of sailing at night. But the cascade of “ooh-ooh-oohs” that follows the line “Will we make it out alive” feels more comforting than distressing.
And Baltimore is actually about them facing the bleak prospect of being unemployed after college. The lyrics are stark as Moore croons: “Can we get a job, can we get a job/We need off this dock, is that asking a lot”.
She tells the audience cheerily though: “You should try starting a band cos somehow that worked for us.”
(ST)