Acclaimed indie pop duo Tennis have released their seventh studio album, Face Down In The Garden, arriving via their own Mutually Detrimental label. Produced and recorded by the husband and wife duo of Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore in their Denver, CO home studio, the album marks the final recordings from this incarnation of Tennis. Offsetting intuitive melodies with unusual arrangements, the new album sees the duo returning to their roots; making music that both feels familiar but also resists convention. Tennis has fully blossomed and leaves listeners with an LP that is unquestionably their most fully realized effort and a natural ending point.
“Face Down In The Garden is our seventh studio album,” says Moore. “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.
“Patrick and I felt out of sync with the world, as though we had been ejected from the flow of life. My response was to bury myself in my own memories. Those years weren’t easier or better, but I could make sense of them. In Face Down In The Garden, I trace the arc of my life through a series of vignettes: a first moment of connection, a conversation at a wedding, a night offshore, a tour diary.
Over the years our sound has evolved into three distinct categories: Brill Building, synth-pop, and rock. Face Down In The Garden occupies all of that space. Except for the help of some outside drumming, we worked and recorded alone as we have done for the last few albums. We wanted to write ourselves off the map by doing the unexpected thing, offsetting intuitive melodies with unusual arrangements, to make music that feels familiar but resists convention. Despite being rattled by a strange year, it is our most confident album. We are very excited for you to listen, preferably loud and on headphones.”
As noted, Tennis will both celebrate the arrival of Face Down In The Garden and say farewell to fans with a wide-ranging North American headline tour beginning May 16 at Las Vegas, NV’s Swan Dive and then traveling into early September. For complete details and ticket availability, please visit tennis-music.com.
