There are really only two kinds of music: music you like and music you don't. You can be persuaded to jump onto a bandwagon, but it's different than love at first listen; It's the difference between a rational and emotional response. I recently watched the documentary Sometimes When We Touch and was annoyed by how much it played up the appeal of soft rock. Why were they trying to convert the masses when they knew they were preaching to the choir? Who did they think the audience was? Soft rock is the rare label that functions both as a put-down (the superficial manufactured opposite of authentic raw hard rock) and also as an accurate definition of what it actually is. I am almost predisposed to like soft rock: as a little kid in the mid-Seventies to early Eighties, it was the soundtrack to being driven around in the family car (without seatbelts) accessed via Top 40 FM radio, or through our state of the art 8-track player. To me, soft rock is specifically tied to that particular time. So I was surprised to see the band Tennis featured in the last episode of the documentary, in which after the rise and ruin, the genre is resurrected.
I've enjoyed the work of this husband and wife duo since their 2011 debut Cape Dory, hooked by its jaunty lead single "Baltimore". But were they really part of the second coming of soft rock? And was that why I liked them? Actually, I think retro more aptly describes the music of Tennis. The power of the term is derived from the weight and context of everything that came before. It’s weird and thrilling to think that at this particular juncture we have decades of musical styles to draw from. Alaina Moore (vocals/keyboards) and Patrick Riley (keyboards/guitar) adapt the sweet melodies and harmonies of Sixties girl groups, sift them through the funky rhythms of the Seventies and glaze them with the cool synths of the Eighties, and the trip-hop of the Nineties and after. They compose catchy tunes about subjects nobody would think to write a song about, and then perform these like sonic time-travelers. Think Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" meets "Lovin' You" by Minnie Ripperton matched with "Heart and Soul" by one-hit-wonders T'Pau, mashed up with Portishead's "It's a Fire" and Mandalay's "Kissing the Day". It really shouldn't work. but it does.
Pastiche is evident in Tennis’ new album, Pollen. There's the foreboding allure and thumping primal beat of Let's Make a Mistake Tonight", which calls to mind Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill". The melancholy piano chords in "Paper" echo Carole King. "Pillow for a Cloud" shares Aimee Mann's clever phrasing and timing. The 10 tracks on Pollen reverberate with the slow-drip contradictions of getting older and fighting a losing battle against the inevitable. "I got nine lives that I'm running through," laments Alaina Mills. Steadfastness is dismissed as stasis in favor of dynamic abandon. The funky, self-assured "Glorietta" accuses "You can't resist the urge to dominate/like it was a Biblical mandate." There are other religious references throughout the album: "I'd turn to salt if I looked back", and "You are the staff striking the rock." And then, "She's as blank as the walls/out of the ashes/She's Lazarus." This does not ward off the bad decisions lurking around every corner. The "blue breezes through arterial streets" in "Gibraltar" describe a tryst via travelogue: "Open the door we can live just like a moth to a flame." "Forbidden Doors" continues the metaphor: "Burned right through a sunset… burned past in a fever/Like a true unbeliever." Why not crash up your life? What do you have to lose? Everything, that's what. This is the tension underlying the music of Tennis. These are the sounds of youth, tempered by the passage of time. The acoustic guitar strumming that introduces "Pollen Song" quickly diverges into a complaint about seasonal allergies ("You point to the trail where the blossoms have fallen/But all I can see is the pollen/fucking me up"), a diversion for a rant against feeling simultaneously stuck and unmoored in your life ("Everything moves too fast/but I've/Been doing the same thing/a thousand times over"). "Never Been Wrong" is not being ironic when it claims it is as "Irrefutable as the rising tide or setting sun" looking down at everything from its lofty perspective: "How can I work with all of this inexactness?/It's like doing needlepoint with a hatchet." The lyrics are like strange poetry. Even stranger: songs allude to each other in recurring phrases. One song asks "Was I at the door listening to your frantic Latin?" and is answered in actual Latin several songs later, translated roughly into "The tongue cannot say what it does not know/do not ask for a miraculous vision."
My two favorite songs are curiously focused on those staffers that park cars at hotels and restaurants. (I wish they were next to each other in the track listing). "One Night with the Valet" packs lovely trills, the lull of keyboards, a chanting rap, and a confident beat into a compact 1:53. "Finding myself tempted by the face of love/really fear that I could never get enough," the singer frets, floating up through the scales, knowing that she is going to give in to her impulses. The longer companion piece "Hotel Valet" takes her back down to earth for either an affair among hospitality workers or roleplay made stranger by employing tame domesticity, or both: "You worked the graveyards and you slept through the day/wearing the uniform of hotel valet/I worked the kitchen when I carried your plate. Who would've known that I was/serving you fate."
Pollen is a stealthy song cycle: the production is smooth, the layers are effective and effusive, and the arrangements are spot on, but the songs describe disarray and dystopia, feeling lost and aimless, unfulfilled: "Time passing used to thrill me/now it only terrorizes me/and its evidence carved into my skin and over everything I ever loved." They deal with the implications of acting on your impulses, fantasizing, daydreaming, wishing you were anywhere but here trying to outrun entropy. Like siren songs, there is menace in the loveliness. You get lost in the music and then think: wait: what's all this about? One haunting lyric says it best: "I remember nothing/I believe everything."
Pollen by Tennis is out now. Details via Bandcamp or via their official website.
[Photo: Luca Venter]