Joplin, Missouri band Tennis Club make a surfy throwback sound, upbeat jangle pop that’s coloured in with the wistful blues and golds of long summer evenings. We covered their self-titled debut back in 2017, a record we described as “short and sweet, each song a shimmery little nugget of lo-fi goodness,” and now Tennis Club are back with a new record, Pink, which we’re glad to report follows in a similar vein.
From the shuffling, sparkling indie pop of ‘Vodkas’, to the jangly high school vibes of ‘London’, Tennis Club cover young love in all its ups and downs. There is heart-quickening excitement and gooey romance and crushing rejection, and above all a sense of longing, either for the past or an imagined future. ‘Stay’ is a good example, what Hernandez calls “probably the only radio friendly song on the record.” It’s a song about self-delusion, about holding out hope in spite of obvious signs. “I wanna stay with you,” Hernandez sings, “don’t hurt me again.”
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‘Mexico City (Rich Girls)’ is the first Spanish-language Tennis Club song, an impossibly upbeat track that lasts exactly 60 seconds. The post break-up song ‘Ghost Cops’ has an interesting back story, as Hernandez tells Counterzine, “A couple of months ago I was picking up my mom from the airport when I got pulled over by the police in a creepy Oklahoma town […] I call them ghost cops because they linger in the dark and come out of nowhere.”
Closer ‘Baby’ strips things back to just guitar and vocals, maybe the prettiest break-up song of the summer. Despite the departure in sound from the others tracks, it’s the perfect illustration of what Tennis Club do so well, light and catchy indie pop songs that nevertheless contain a core of heartbreak.
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Pink is out now and you can get it from the Tennis Club Bandcamp page.
