Tennis

To some, Tennis’s whirlwind story sometimes seems just a bit too quaint and fantastical to be true: Boy meets girl, they fall in love, save money, take a sailing trip along the Atlantic Seaboard, hear “Baby It’s You” in a Floridian bar, store the sound and try to re-create it upon returning home. They succeed, become instant darlings of the blogosphere and land a record deal — in less than a year. If the tale, as told, is true, Tennis is a source of true wonderment, one in which the sturdy, vibrant vocals and rollerskating organ work of Alaina Moore and the jangly, minimally effected guitars of Patrick Riley, which anchor the band’s sound, are simply the result of keen melodic sensibililities and an acute natural proclivity for harmonic structure. Or the pair are expert studies who tapped into the zeitgeist at exactly the right time. Whatever the case, we find the couple, along with drummer James Barone, who engineered the record, in the midst of an endless summer on Cape Dory, adroitly channeling the sound of mid-’60s acts like the Shangri-Las, the Crystals and the Shirelles.