Tennis on Why Their ‘We Can Die Happy’ EP Is a Turning Point in the Duo’s Career

Jordan Bailey

From the mountains of Colorado to the seas of the Atlantic, husband and wife duo Tennis have have always turned to the calmness of nature for inspiration. Their last album, “Yours Conditionally,” was released earlier this year after they spent months sailing the open waters of the eastern seaboard. This reflective approach to songwriting not only lead to one of their best albums yet, but also gave fans even more reason to swoop up one of the 24,000 vinyl’s they sold this year. Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley weren’t done yet, however. Since then, they’ve started their own label and have self-released an EP which they recorded in their apartment.

“We Can Die Happy” details, in part, the feeling of freedom the two have rejoiced in since leaving the music industry for a more DIY approach. Moore took some time out of rehearsal today to speak with Entertaintainment Voice about their latest EP and their newfound success, which has launched them into their largest headlining tour to date.

First off, what if anything can you say about the sound of your new EP “We Can Die Happy” that stands out from your previous works?

The sounds that we choose, the arrangements and everything, it’s always formed by our place at the moment. For this record and our last record, it’s almost more pragmatically motivated than anything. We recorded most of this in our apartment so that just inherently limits what all we can use on the record. But I actually really prefer working that way. When I approach something and I have infinite choices, like those really big studios that have everything you want, it’s really hard for me to make choices. So I like starting off with, ‘I have one room, I have three instruments, I don’t really have a lot of options, I can only work during this hour of the day so we don’t disturb our neighbors.’ And that’s how we made our record.

The song “I Miss That Feeling” is pretty remarkable in that it sort of romanticizes anxiety by putting its symptoms into the context of love. As someone who suffers from anxiety, did it feel cathartic to write about this track?

Absolutely. I started writing that song in little bits and pieces for the past year-and-a-half, and the song came together and that sentiment kind of evolved as I was deepening my understanding of how I live with my anxiety, and shifting my own attitude towards it from trying to conquer or eliminate or eradicate my anxiety to just treating it like my constant companion. Thinking of it more as like a union sense, like a shadow side or something, like you would never remove that from yourself (or) you’d be like half a person. So when I started to let myself think of it that way, it made it easier when I would feel a panic attack starting, in a more detached way, noticed the way it felt physiologically. If I wasn’t scared of this, I would think that I was feeling like I was falling in love or like I just got really good news or something. It didn’t’ have to be dread and panic. I often have anxiety over… it’s not necessarily triggered by a bad thing, but just a lot going on in my life, even just a tour or something, which is (a) good thing. The song was a really difficult labor of love but I really feel like I gained a lot of ground in the way that I live with my own anxiety.

You’ve said that the track “No Exit” was “way poppier” than Patrick would have liked a typical Tennis song to be. This begs the question, has he come around to it yet?

He really likes it now. He wouldn’t have let us use it if he didn’t. When we were first working on it, we had like a verse and a pre-chorus written and I loved it. It was called something else. We were calling it “True Blue” at the time. He was like, ‘This is not Tennis. This is too much for me.’ I kept saying ‘Fine, I’ll just start my own side-project where I can finish this song’ (laughs). But by the time I convinced him to just let me finish it because it was so close, he totally came around to it.

Plus, in the middle of working on that song we had a real surreal experience where we were locked in a venue in London during the terror attack on London Bridge. I had always meant for that song to be a dance song for someone who’s having a terrible time, or can’t let themselves be happy. Because I am usually that person who’s always worried or panicked and not losing myself on the dance floor. We actually DJ’d that night for everyone. We were locked in the venue and no one knew what was going on and everyone was afraid and we were there until like five in the morning. I was realizing how strangely…it felt like it had this predictive quality of this very surreal thing that I had been writing this song for a really particular feeling and then that exact night came true. Like a really, really like, nervous, awkward, worried dance party where everyone was thinking about mortality over anything else. And Pat was like, ‘Ok, we can definitely use this song now.’

Disconnecting is a huge part of your writing process. You’ve been known to take these long sailing trips, just the two of you, to clear your headspace before writing an album. Do you put the same amount of emphasis when writing something on a slightly smaller scale such as your latest EP?

Yea, it’s always the same. It’s just our environment has changed. I feel like our songwriting is sometimes better at home on land because I have access to a piano, which is my primary instrument, so I feel like we can do better musically when were home. But my headspace is much more amenable to creativity and risk-taking and openness when I’m sailing. So I like to try to get a blend of those. Sometimes we’ll start a song on land and finish it on a sailing ship. All of our songs are usually long projects. It’s maybe one out of 15 that shape up in like a day or two. Most of them we just pick away at for a really long time. So this shifting of environments I feel like has been really helpful for (us). We tend to just overthink things. This is something that we’ve found that works for us.

Given that you’ve recently left your previous label to start your own (Mutually Detrimental), have you found the overall process of producing music more taxing without the support of a label that you’ve been used to?

Honestly, the only difference is reimbursing us immediately. And even the kind of record deals that we’ve always had in the past, even if you have a label committing to giving you an advance, the way our deals always worked, we would never get the advance unless we delivered them the record and they decided they liked it. So we always took that first risk financially, so that didn’t change. So now instead of recouping immediately with an advance, we just have to go on tour until we get the money back.

You’ve recently took part in a couple of Reddit AMAs, you’ve annotated your own lyrics on Genius and of course do plenty in the way of social media. Do you now feel more engaged in the process of promoting?

Yea, absolutely. And this is the sort of thing that’s really meaningful because it’s just helping people understand where we’re at and what our vision is for our music, what we were thinking about when we made it. I used to be very reticent to overshare, and I still don’t want to too much. I used to never tell anyone what the songs were about or anything like that. Actually, what changed my mind was reading other people’s annotated lyrics and realizing that it was opening a whole new level of my experience of something that I already loved. For the AMA thing, I was very unfamiliar with Reddit, and I love it Reddit now. It’s incredible.

Speaking of, a recent Instagram post of yours showed a Billboard list of the top ten mid-year vinyl sales of 2017 and Tennis came in at number nine. Surrounding you on the list were artists like Amy Winehouse, The Beatles and Prince. What does this say about the state of the music industry in your mind?

Honestly, what I think is more telling about the music industry with that chart is that “Guardians of the Galaxy” soundtrack… that was in the top ten charting vinyl sales. I feel like that was more indicative of how music listening and fan interaction with things have changed. For us, all it says is what Pat and I have known for sure, which is that we sell more vinyl than anything else. For us it’s either streaming or vinyl. These are the same arguments we had in the past, now we don’t have to have these arguments anymore because we run our own label. We put all of our focus on vinyl, none into CD’s at all because that’s not what we sell. We sell records. I know every band is different, so it’s important to know what medium works better for your own fan base. I’m really glad vinyl has made a comeback and that our fans like to listen to vinyl, it’s great for us.

Lastly, do you equate this recent change, leaving the so-called “industry” for a more DIY approach, to ultimately feeling more successful? After all, you’re about to set off on your largest headlining tour to-date.

I feel much, much more successful. It’s weird because with every different release there’s like multiple different aspects of successful album campaigns. And we never get all of the markers each time. We’ll get like one or two or three or whatever. You know, we’re always missing like one thing. But it doesn’t matter when it’s a smaller scale campaign, and it costs less, and we run it ourselves. We can still have an extremely successful year even though it might look smaller on paper. So this is the best record sales year we’ve had in ages. But we didn’t get to do TV, which was really weird, so there’s always one thing we didn’t get. When we were on a proper label, there was this attitude of nothing’s ever enough. That was extremely difficult for me psychologically, because you could never just feel satisfied with what you have. I would rather quit this, and have a day job and write music for someone on the side, than feel like I could never be happy or fulfilled by what our band achieves. I’m much happier now.

“We Can Die Happy” is available Nov. 10 on Apple music.