'Pollen' by Tennis
'Pollen' by Tennis
Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley have a curious alchemy that transmutes their matrimonial bond into the indie-pop pleasures of their band, Tennis. On the sixth Tennis full-length, Pollen, Moore and Riley also continue to transmute 1970s and 1980s influences into musical scenes that are at once louche and loving, debauched and innocent.
Moore’s voice provides much of the love and innocence, mixing the girlishness of early Madonna with the sensuality of Alison Goldfrapp and the cool of other indie singers from Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier to Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell. Moore’s most distinguishing vocal feature is the strength she puts inside her softness.
Following upon the critical and commercial high of 2020’s Swimmer, Tennis doesn’t radically depart from what worked then. Like most of the discography, Pollen sounds as though its creators have built upon previous work with cautious tweaks, thoughtful refinements, and small-step explorations.
Pollen does feel perceptibly more downbeat than Swimmer. In one of the bouncier tracks, “Let’s Make a Mistake Again,” a dark rhythm shadows the crisp Clapton-style guitar licks and LED-flash synth notes, and the lyrics—“I don’t know what I expected/But now you see what I’m left with”—contain less hope than Moore’s delivery of them suggests.
Underneath the hippie-funk Fleetwood Mac strumming of “Glorietta,” the Carole King piano of “One Night With the Valet,” and the dreamy pop a la Lush of “Pollen Song,” themes of escape, worry, and disappointment lurk behind the narratives but fortunately don’t completely engulf the songs.
Some credit for that goes to Moore and Riley’s cooperative production, which diffuses the moods in an old-fashioned haze that can make Pollen tracks resemble artifacts from the decades that influence Tennis. Most of the credit, however, goes to their craftsmanship, with a significant sliver kept aside for their amorous sorcery.
