Over the first decade-plus of their career, Tennis released a remarkably conscious string of albums, each one of them brimming with soft-focus soul, soft rock sweetness, and a gentle sense of adventure and romance. The duo of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley have always known exactly how to wring maximum emotion out of simple songs played with finesse and produced with subtlety. 2023's Pollen is no different, though it does take their sound out of the bedroom and out to the lanai. The pair stated that this was meant to be a ...
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Over the first decade-plus of their career, Tennis released a remarkably conscious string of albums, each one of them brimming with soft-focus soul, soft rock sweetness, and a gentle sense of adventure and romance. The duo of Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley have always known exactly how to wring maximum emotion out of simple songs played with finesse and produced with subtlety. 2023's Pollen is no different, though it does take their sound out of the bedroom and out to the lanai. The pair stated that this was meant to be a bigger, more pop-leaning record, and their main concession to that seems to be the occasional distorted guitar, a little more bump in the rhythm section, and overall punchier production. They strip away just enough of the gauze for Moore's vocals to take center stage. Songs like "Glorietta" could even be Garbage, if one squinted really hard. These small deviations might feel drastic at first, but the sum of the parts is still as pleasant as ever once the album ends. There is certainly enough tenderness, more than a few songs that could have been '70s radio hits, and plenty of care given to the arrangements. Many bands who travel a similar path to Tennis tend to just calmly plow through the songs with nary a thought to dynamics; they have never had that problem, and Pollen shows the duo at the top of their game. A few of the high points are the way the synths go squishy halfway through "One Night with the Valet," the chiming vibraphone that peeks out from behind Moore's reliably honey-sweet vocal on "Pollen Song," the strangled guitar riffs and vocoder hums that pepper "Gibraltar," and the shoegaze guitars that billow throughout "Pillow for a Cloud." Along with making a record that sounds nearly perfect (as usual), they turn in a typically good batch of songs that don't take more than a spin or two to feel like they've been part of one's life for years. Pollen is yet more proof that Tennis make the kind of music that feels comforting and exciting at the same time. It's rare that a band can ever manage to find that magical sweet spot, and even more amazing that a group can hold steady right in the middle of it for as long as they have. ~ Tim Sendra, Rovi
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