19 MAY 15-21, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Final Serve ANYONE FOR TENNIS? DENVER’S INDIE-POP DARLING IS ABOUT TO GET OUT OF THE MUSIC GAME. BY JUSTIN CRIADO Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore are fi nally serving match point. It took fi fteen years, but the husband-and- wife duo behind Denver indie-pop darling Tennis is offi cially calling it a career. The announcement accompanied the news of Tennis’s latest and fi nal album, Face Down in the Garden, released on April 25 via the band’s label, Mutually Detrimental. The two musicians see their seventh record and upcom- ing fi ve-month tour as a fi tting way to send a proper farewell to their many fans after an un- expectedly fruitful and wildly successful run. Moore and Riley met at the University of Colorado Denver in 2008 while studying music, and started Tennis as a side project after graduating and returning from their fi rst sailing trip together. Neither had much experience — Moore had only sung in youth church choirs — but they knew they could handle being weekend warriors while look- ing for more serious, real-world jobs. Moore mulled over going to law school, while Riley did installation work at the Mu- seum of Contemporary Art. The couple quietly put out a single, “South Carolina,” then an EP, Baltimore, in July 2010. A debut album, Cape Dory, which included the three songs from Baltimore, followed in 2011. It ended up landing on NPR’s radar, and Ten- nis — the moniker an ode to Riley’s past life as an actual tennis instructor — had legs. Riley is still surprised by the overnight hype that Cape Dory and a subsequent sold- out tour drummed up. “That was the fi rst moment we knew, ‘Oh, woah, maybe we should consider quitting our jobs because people are offering real money for us to pursue this,’” he says. “We didn’t know we were going to do this for a living, so our fi rst album, I think we wrote it in like two weeks.” Though admittedly unprepared, Tennis became their full-time focus. Being caught in the maelstrom of rising fame felt overwhelm- ing, Moore remembers. “We saw some critiques early on, especially in Denver, saying that we were getting more than we deserved. What was funny is that I ac- tually agreed,” she admits. “I was like, ‘You’re right, we haven’t earned this, we’ve been a band for fi ve minutes. I don’t even feel like I can do this.’ It was a really crazy experience.” Fortunately, Moore and Riley stuck it out and can now rest easy knowing they commit- ted their young-adult years to building Tennis into one of the city’s biggest and best indie exports of the last two decades. “It feels so good to be on the other side of it and be like, ‘Okay, we’ve been doing this for years. We know how to make a record. We know how to tour,’” Moore explains. “In this weird way, once we fi - nally got to this point where we feel like we’re fi ring on all cylinders, we really know what we’re doing, we actu- ally feel done. We feel like we’ve just taken the band as far as we want to take it — or really could in a way that makes sense with who we are as people and artists. It feels like it’s time to move on.” So while the swan song might seem sudden, the deci- sion had been a long time com- ing, particularly given Moore’s health concerns while on the road in 2021, when she fainted after contracting a virus. After that, it only felt right to be hon- est about where they were at, the duo says. “We actually knew right away that it was going to be our last record. What we didn’t know for sure is if we wanted to lead with that in our messaging,” Moore explains. “We were worried about the album. We wanted it to stand on its own feet as an album and not get buried in the narrative of us re- tiring,” she continues. “But then, as things were progressing, we realized that if we were in the position of our fans, I would want to know that it was the band’s last album and tour, so we fi nally decided to go ahead and be open about that.” It’s a sweet sentiment that falls in line with Moore’s endearing writing style — forthright and autobiographical, a Tennis trademark. On Face Down in the Garden, it’s evident that she and Riley didn’t hold back, again pouring themselves into the nine tracks, as they’ve always done. They don’t know any other way, so culminating a decade-plus of dedication, ups and downs, success and sorrow into a well-packaged thirty minutes proved to be no easy task. “We thought it was going to be freeing, but it ended up being like handcuffs,” Riley shares. “When you start thinking about, ‘Oh, we’re kind of a real band now with an actual fanbase. What are people going to remember us by?’ This last album became so important. We actually got buried by the heft of the existential order that it was demanding.” “It’s why the album is so short, because we kept throwing away songs,” Moore adds. “We had written so many more songs, but our fi lter was so refi ned we just kept saying, ‘This is the last thing we’re going to say as Tennis, so there can’t be fi ller.’ It was really tough.” In an age of information overload and endless content creation, it’s refreshing to hear they would rather trim the superfl uous instead of putting something out for the sake of it. It also makes Face Down in the Garden, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Pollen (2023), as poignant a Tennis record as any. Of course, it showcases Moore’s serenading siren calls paired with her piano playing and Riley’s hypnotically soothing guitar and bass licks. “My number-one goal was to have a strong emotional core to the songs lyrically. I ex- perimented with a lot of stream-of-conscious singing to just try and let the language come to me,” Moore says, adding that each offering conveys “an absolute emotional truth. “I wanted to take a risk emotionally. It’s easy to guard myself with logic or ambiguity with what I’m trying to say, so that no one can hold me accountable for what I said if they don’t like it. A lot of that was my own insecurity. I really wanted to try write with a different kind of wisdom that was less rational, more emotional because I feel like often, I’m too guarded to let myself do that. That was my biggest goal with this album.” Such songs as “12 Blown Tires,” “At the Apartment” and “Always the Same” are testa- ments to the couple’s unfettered expression- ism, making it hard to believe the band is done creating such moving music. From the outside looking in, there seems to be more left in the Tennis tank, but as Moore and Riley confi - dently confi de, they’ve completely emptied the well and are content in knowing they’ve said everything they’ve wanted to as Tennis. So when both respond with an emphatic “no” when asked if they ever second-guessed retirement while crafting Face Down in the Garden, we take their word for it — even though a future without Tennis seems hard to accept. The two have done whatever’s necessary to navigate the sea change of the music indus- try since fi rst forming in 2010, but it’s time to head for harbor. “We have had a really, really big career. We never knew this was going to continue on this long,” Riley explains. “We always thought, ‘At some point, people are going to want to stop hearing our music, and we’re going to fade,’ and it just never happened. Fast forward to now, we’ll have played over 1,000 shows since we started. We have defi nitely put in way more than 10,000 hours doing this. We’re just at this spot.” Artists simply have to do more to sustain a viable livelihood, he adds, pointing to several behind-the-scenes aspects that are often over- looked, including declining royalty revenues forcing musicians to take on more tasks that were traditionally hired out. It’s not the sexi- est thing to talk about, but that’s the reality. For example, on the band’s fi nal run, which kicks off May 16 in Vegas and includes a Denver date with Real Estate on Tuesday, August 26, at the Mission Ballroom, Riley is still doubling as tour manager and van driver. “We’ve been MUSIC continued on page 20 With the release of its latest record, Denver duo Tennis announced its plan to retire this year. COURTESY DARREN VARGAS
