What might have started out as a quirky experiment making music to document their Atlantic coast sailing journey has turned into something a whole lot more meaningful for indie darlings and married couple Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley. Whereas their first two critically acclaimed albums, along with one stellar E.P., might have been labors of love and creative outpourings; Tennis, the duo and from Denver, are about to release their third and finally feel some pressure to deliver. Maybe that’s a good thing for a band that seems to have easily and quietly seeped into the ears of all the lo-fi-revivalists digging for their next favorite band that sounds like their from another time. With the first track “Never Work For Free” released this past summer they certainly got the “band from another time” thing right, but maybe not the era you were hoping for. Instead, the hints we got of Ritual and Repeat (out tomorrow 9/9 on Communion Records) prepare you for a bigger, cleaner, undertaking, made perhaps of more labor than love. We got the chance to catch up with Alaina and talk to her about the new record, internships and how pursuing your passions academically doesn’t always work out.
AP: The new album is Ritual in Repeat. What’s the ritual in the youre referring to in the title?
Alaina: The inspiration on Ritual in Repeat is that this album was the hardest thing ever to write. It took a year and a half and we thought maybe we were losing our minds. On our second album, everyone kept asking if we were experiencing sophomore slump, but we didn’t and I didn’t even know that that was a thing. But then after I think it kind of of stayed in my mind because for this one I just completely had writer’s block. I wanted to feel like I was evolving as a songwriter but had no idea what I wanted to sound like. If that makes any sense?
AP: Yeah!
Alaina: So Patrick and I moved to Nashville from Denver to write thinking the change would be inspiring, but it turned out it didn’t make any difference because we were really stumped. So then someone recommended a book to me called Daily Rituals that outlined all of these great artists, scientists, composers throughout history and it didn’t evaluate their work that they made it just showed what they did every day to be as productive as they were. Everyone had their own kind of ritual and I was really surprised by the fact that most of these people just day in and day had set up these routines. So I started experimenting with creating my own ritual, so to speak, forcing myself to make this a part of my life rather than wait for a burst of inspiration to come, y’know rather than just like sitting around staring at a piano and wondering why I wasn’t playing this amazing song. I just started grinding it out in the most mundane kind of a way and I broke it down into simpler tasks and all of a sudden we started finishing songs that we hadn’t be able to do for over sixth months. From there we went from having 3 songs to 15, and they were me discovering the way I wanted to sound, what I felt like was a step forward and was seriously like unlocking a mystery to creating for me. No one ever told to me it’s so dull, boring, and tedious, so we ended up calling the album Ritual in Repeat because it ended up taking an exuberant amount of time. It was the ritual that allowed us to make the record.
AP: So do think being in Nashville forced you to be a bit more disciplined? You’re in Nashville, you got Patrick Carney around and your just like “oh shit we just gotta like grind this thing out?” (Carney produced Tennis’s last record, Young and Old, and their follow up EP, Small Sound)
Alaina: Weirdly, when we first moved to Nashville we had the idea of doing some writing with Patrick (Carney, of the Black Keys, not her husband), then the month we moved there the Grammys happened. They won like seven Grammys and went on tour again. So instead we ended up having this really quiet isolated time alone in Nashville, and then we didn’t meet up with him until later when we already had the songs in the studio. So again, it definitely felt like we were all alone floundering. We definitely thought they might be able to coach us along during this period, but in the end I’m glad we didn’t end up having to lean on anyone. We had to figure it out the hard way.
I feel like people always talk about what inspired them, but no one ever talks about the routine leading to the inspiration. I feel just as personally connected to this album as I did the first, which was just a lightning strike of creativity I didn’t have to think about. The thoughts just came pouring out.But in the end though, I do feel just as intimately connected to this album as I did with the first one.
AP: The first two tracks (off the new record) are a totally different sound though. You’ve gone from this lofi stripped down sound to this bigger more sleek production. Was this planned out, just felt right for the particular songs or a conscious effort?
Alaina: When we first started making music we were obsessed with 60’s production. Including that lo-fi, wall of sound sorta thing. This time we just started progressing forward through the history of rock n roll and the last couple of years we’ve been listening to a lot more 70’s production, like early prog stuff, even pop, like Todd Rudgren and even like King Crimson. So yeah I just started to get into a more clean production sound. To this day, nothing guts me emotional like hearing 60’s lo-fi production. It sounds so primordial and I love it, but I think a lot of people are skeptical of bands that only use that style and it’s a I don’t think it’s fair for the aesthetics, but I think it is fair to ask the artists “Are you just masking your complete inability to play your instruments with layers of fuzz and reverb?” So I think Patrick and I ended up wanted to challenge ourselves with a more microscopic type of production that would require us to really up our game and see what we were capable of us as writers and musicians. Something that could reveal more subtleties of the music instead of just the simple innocence of a low fi recording. But I still to this day deeply love the 60s vibe production and there is some of it on this record and we’ll probably get back to it some more at some point.
AP: So we’re in Boston and it’s back to school time. I’m thinking about these poor college kids that are getting started with internships, Is “Never Work For Free” taking a stab at them?
Alaina: That line is probably the least indicative of what the song is about, but we felt like it was incendiary so we chose it for the title. But personally I’ve done a lot of unpaid work so I can’t knock it. I think it about more as being an independent artist, you have to what you want to do and if you’re not going to abide by anyone else’s rules, then you have to be willing to do without being paid, and we’ve definitely done that. The song is actually about a relationship, so it’s not really speaking to anything monetarily as much as it is about this relationship I had, but I felt like the title would be something people could relate to even if they didn’t care to listen to all that.
AP: You guys met in a philosophy class which was obviously fate, but If you could go back to study music would you?
Alaina: What’s funny is we both did go to school for music initially but at different universities. I started out as a vocal performance major, and I was basically being forced to do jazz-scat improvising like once a week in front of the student body and thought this is such a waste of my time. It was also the hardest major ever, I can’t even believe I was so un-diligent and failed my music theory classes. So I switched to philosophy. What’s weird is people say you should study what you love and I totally love music so much, but I hated music academically and I was failing and depressed the whole time. So I switched to Philosophy and got all A’s, I never missed a class, and that’s when I met Patrick. We both switched to UC Boulder to study philosophy and left music behind. We didn’t even know about those aspects of each other’s lives until later. It wasn’t even something that came up until we had been together for a couple of years.
AP: Yeah, so that’s crazy, and what happened the first time you realized you both played music? I know you’ve said before you when you first saw his guitar you were scared he would be another guy playing Dave Matthews.
Alaina: I would sing around him jokingly, but not seriously at all. It wasn’t until we actually decided to write a song that we took it somewhat seriously. But even then it was just something fun and creative we wanted to do together. We were like “lets write a song and who cares if it sucks?” By that time we realized we both we liked the same kind of music so I wasn’t worried he was going to play a Dave Matthews cover.
AP: The first record, Cape Dory, was about a big sailing trip, any big adventures planned for the future?
Alaina: Sailing is still really important to us, so it’s still something we try to do. Our first record was like this travel log about this adventure we had together, but now that we are on the road so much for the band I actually hate traveling and it’s not as fulfilling. I like being on the road, but when were done we just want to go home and not move. I guess that’s the appeal of the sailboat because even if you’re traveling your still kind of home.
You can catch Tennis, along with Pure Bathing Culture at Sinclair on September 29.