Tennis - “Marathon”
Part of the reason I’m writing today about Tennis, the Devner fuzz-pop duo of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore (husband and wife, don’tcha know), is that a few of their mp3s have been posted with favorable comments on several websites, but all that really means is that they’re new and show promise. Another reason I’m writing about them is that they have a fun and critically relevant story. The seeds of the band (just the name, really) were planted a few years back when Moore poked fun at her husband for having played “an elitist rich man’s sport” in college. Then, last year, the couple decided to drop everything and spend eight months sailing up and down the Atlantic coast, which is also when they started writing songs.
Hopefully the conceptual link between those two story points is apparent. In a lot of people’s minds, sailing on the eastern seaboard as much an elitist rich man’s pursuit as tennis. Regardless of the state of their bank accounts, Riley and Moore knowingly surround themselves with representations of upper class leisure. There’s no snootiness or false contempt in their music, but there is a breezy, playful sense of amusement usually afforded to tourists and gadabouts. On “Marathon,” they play a textbook 50s/60s pop bass line against happy hand claps, organ, and a dose of noise guitar. Riley constructs what amounts to a predictable track out of familiar elements while leaving himself room for furious strumming, which works in tandem with the filter on Moore’s voice to obscure a good portion of the lyrics. On the one hand, it’s not the easiest approach to get behind because it willfully covers up the track’s most distinguishing characteristic. On the other hand, though it may frustrate some, it will beguile others with its of-the-moment lo-fi trappings and withholding of details that must be sought out on repeated listens.
A Tennis song is like a post card, and “Marathon” comes to us from just a few hours down I-75. “Coconut Grove is a very small cove / separated from the sea by a shifting shoal,” begins Moore, setting the scene as the adventurers make their way toward the Florida keys. “We didn’t realize that we had arrived / at high tide, but we made it out alive.” They cast themselves endearingly by hinting that they don’t really know what they’re doing and that they could be in a tiny amount of danger. They encounter fishermen working without lights after dark and eventually make their way to shore (Marathon is on one of the larger islands about half way to Key West). “On the sand our keel was even / but tonight we’ve got to be leaving / travel through the day and into the evening,” she explains. Even as dry land beckons with the promise of rest and stability, they have to keep moving through the “moonless skies [and] shifty wind that gusts and dies.” Sailing for fun may be a first-world pleasure, but I wonder if what Tennis are really after is the thrill of small discovery and constant escape. It’s not that they can’t drop anchor, they just don’t want to.
