What a week it has been for the indie rock world. With an inadvertent(?) fun. upload by the band’s own label on Sunday, followed by Sleigh Bells 12 hours later, it’s not surprising that Tennis has been all but ignored. To my knowledge, Young & Old didn’t even leak, which is kind of a slap in the face for a young band in the indie-sphere. Records seem to surface early on the Internet only if there is a lot of hype/anticipation surrounding their release.
Don’t worry Tennis, I didn’t forget about you. Cape Dory was one of the first records that I checked out for Swole Ear, and I’ve been following this band ever since. Tennis is easily one of the most underrated bands making music today, with a sound that should have taken the world by storm after that first record came out last year.
The duo seems to have abandoned the nautical theme on this record, as the eight-month sailing trip that originally inspired them to record moves further and further back in the rearview. Most of the lyrics on Cape Dory revolve around that trip, with quite a few lines with double meanings. This time around, Tennis decided to slap us in the face with their pathos—these songs are about love, and leave almost no sailing metaphors to dissect. That left me a little disappointed. Not many bands write songs about boats, unless there’s some weird metal sub-genre that I’m unaware of . . . ocean-core, or something. Musically, however, these songs will have no problem transporting you to some boat off of a Cape Cod shore. Dreamy, pitch-perfect singing, paired with those good ol’ jangly/trebly guitars sound as if they belong to the sea.
Swole Ear 
That weird sub-genre of sailing music? That would be Jimmy Buffet and his “parrot-head’ followers.
Mr. Ear, There is nothing wrong with this album. Really. It is all very listenable. But is there really anything noteworthy here? I am hearing competence, not inspiration.
Blondie pretty much did this in the late 1970’s and it was derivative then.
“That left me a little disappointed. Not many bands write songs about boats, unless there’s some weird metal sub-genre that I’m unaware of . . . ocean-core, or something.”
Hahah, I loled