Review: independent tennis duo brings privacy to Houston show

Through
Lia Pikus

3/10/20 5:55 pm

Last Monday evening, as the independent tennis duo went on stage at the White Oak Music Hall, the leader Alaina Moore and I had two important points in common: we both wore fabulous combinations and we were both terribly ill with a cold.

I woke up with a cold today because I have the immune system of a Victorian orphan, she joked between their first and second sets. I took singing lessons with the Ushers voice teacher before this tour … it doesn't matter because I'm really sick today.

Fighting diseases (which tennis has had some notable) to navigate the world, indie pop lovers Moore and her husband Patrick Riley have been hip-bound for more than a decade. After meeting in their college year, Moore and Riley saved enough money to embark on a seven-month sea adventure along the East Coast post-graduation. While swaying over the Atlantic, the duo wrote most of their debut album, Cape Dory, immersing them in the spotlight in which they have basked in since.

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Last year, the duo went back to the seas to write their new album, Swimmer, a triumph of nine songs released on Valentine's Day. Sunny and dreamy, the album juxtaposes the warm touch of soft-pop inspired by the 60s with a heartbreaking lyricism, exploring themes ranging from the bittersweet reality of aging to the meaning of marital love after the first fire of passions is replaced by a more lost flame.

Swimmer is a tour of some of the darkest periods of our lives, the duo posted on Facebook in January. But this is not a grim record … it is us at the most vulnerable.

Seeing live tennis made this juxtaposition tangible, the audience was divided between an energetic bopping and a thoughtful swing. However, the visible relationships between the artists on stage were just as fascinating as Moores' lyricism. Each of the four musicians Moore, Riley, their drummer and their bass player seemed to exist in their own individual reality throughout the night. Hidden behind a sheet of plunging bangs, Riley has mainly turned his back on the rest of the musicians, rarely taking his eyes off his fingers flying up and down the neck of his instrument. Although occasionally deliberately taking center stage and looking attentively into the audience, Moore also rarely stepped away from his perch to the right of the stage, maintaining a distance constant between her and her husband for the majority of the performance. Located behind the leading groups and rarely in the spotlight, the other two members of the group were similarly absorbed in their own worlds, dressed in tuxedos and squatting on their instruments. If we were to judge musical compatibility over physical connectivity, performance to an outside eye could have simply looked like a patchwork of disparate creative energies.

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However, the performance was anything but disjointed. Although never speaking directly or being in eye contact with each other (at least until the last set), Moore and Rileys felt tangible emotional intimacy and charged musical compatibility throughout the room with electricity so palpable that you could hear audible gasps every time Moore turned his gaze to her. husband. The musical contribution of each group, although certainly focused on individual art, brought a crucial and perfectly calculated dimension to the performance. What appeared to be a disjunction to the eye resulted in a network of musical relationships completely captivating in practice.

On the way home, my friend and I were curled up in the back to discuss the often disappointing realities of live indie concerts. Subject to a dull audience and an instrumentation that does not always translate well in large spaces, soft pop / rock sometimes feels like a disappointment when played live. Yet while the tennis crowd in itself had nothing to say, living a live musical and emotional relationship with Moore and Rileys imbued their music with a whole new electricity, impossible to understand from of a single hearing experience. Watching Moore and Riley effortlessly pierce an entire room with an extended look or a loving smile brought an entirely new and wonderful understanding to their music; Watching live tennis, even when tired and sniffled, is an experience you simply can't pass up.

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