Tennis, Young & Old
Featured Album
Crossing over the saccharine plain
After they married, husband and wife duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley embarked on a sailing expedition down the Eastern Atlantic Seaboard, and then afterward, recorded the albumCape Dury inspired by the voyage. Judging by the ebullient nature of the follow-up, Young & Old was presumably inspired by a springtime road trip down I-95 in a convertible with the top turned down.
The Denver-based trio’s sophomore release is sunshiny, retro and, frankly, irresistible, just like the debut. Yet, while their timeless pop still references the Shangri-Las, the Carpenters and early Cardigans, it bears a beefier and more substantive bottom thanks in part to the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney’s production. With the bespectacled garage rocker’s steroid injection, tracks like the buoyant “High Road” and the jaunty “My Better Self” aren’t concerned with getting the once-impeccably preppy aesthetic a little dirty. Or to paraphrase Moore in the breezy “Traveling,” the band finds itself “crossing over the saccharine plain.”
