Tennis - At The Apartment (Live)

In June, I hope to see long-time indie pop favorites Tennis on their farewell tour. The husband and wife duo of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore are calling it quits after an impressive run.

The pair made this statement regarding the end of their time as Tennis:

It became clear that we had said everything we wanted to say and achieved everything we wanted to achieve with our band … We are ready to pursue other creative projects and to make space in our lives for new things.

It sounds like a standard, almost corporate-like goodbye message. When they were promoting their just-released 7th album Face Down In The Garden, though, they were a bit more candid about the challenges they had faced.

The inspiration for new work came while we were still on the road touring Pollen. We felt a clear pull to write new music, but ran up against a series of bizarre setbacks. We blew tires and lost an engine. I developed a chronic illness. We took a doomed voyage that culminated in an attempted robbery at sea. Fragments of songs that first arrived like gifts from the universe later refused to be completed. Our days were awash in major and minor crises that dragged the album out endlessly.

Touring would seem to be particularly difficult under some of the circumstances described in the message. The band has certainly toured prolifically. I was supposed to see them at the Haw River Ballroom when Covid-19 came along and spoiled those plans and many others. It also sounds like there were plenty of problems to interrupt the progress of making an album.

“At The Apartment” is the first track on Face Down In The Garden and it sets the mood for the rest of the album, which hits a melancholy note fitting for the band’s send off. The video is a live version of the song recorded, you guess it, in an apartment. It features frequent Tennis collaborator and one of my favorite indie singers, Molly Burch, on backup vocals. This may be the closest thing we get from Burch to new music.¹ Of course, this may be one of the last few videos from Tennis, as well.

Tennis - At The Apartment (Live) (YouTube)