Tennis is wrapping up their musical journey with a final album, Face Down in the Garden, and a farewell tour across North America this summer.
Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore are stepping away from the band after realizing they’ve expressed everything they wanted through their music. “This will be our last studio album, at least in this configuration as Tennis. We are ready to pursue other creative projects and to make space in our lives for new things,” Moore shared. Their single “12 Blown Tires” accompanies this announcement, and you can check out the tracklist for Face Down in the Garden below.
Back when Riley and Moore were university students, they embarked on an eight-month sailing adventure that sparked Tennis’s creation in 2010. This voyage inspired their early works like Cape Dory, which charmed listeners with its vintage vibes. Over time, they released more albums such as Young and Old, Ritual in Repeat, Yours Conditionally, Swimmer, and most recently, Pollen. Their tunes like “Origins” became indie-pop favorites. “Their music…touches on tide patterns…and emphasizes the essential romance of the whole adventure—that they went through it all together,” one review noted.
The new album drops April 25 under Tennis’s label Mutually Detrimental. Plus, they’re releasing a compilation called Neutral Poetry: First Recordings, Unreleased Demos 2009-2010. The farewell tour starts May 16—coinciding with the release of Neutral Poetry—in Las Vegas and runs until September.
Fans sometimes feel like they’re part of a band’s journey too; it’s bittersweet when it ends.
“On a cross-country drive at the end of tour, our van and trailer blew four tires in quick succession…I counted the shredded remains of twelve tires from where we sat on the side of the road…” The song “12 Blown Tires” was born from these chaotic moments mixed with sweet memories from life on tour. It captures fifteen years into four intense minutes—a blend of joy, confusion, challenge, humility—and marks an end for now but also hints at new beginnings ahead. Maybe we’ll see them again down some road or another someday!
