Love Found, Love Lost, Love Reshaped
Photos (and words) by Elena Saviano.
Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley have been making music as Tennis for fifteen years.
They have been married for seventeen. “Face Down in the Garden,” their final record, is a luminous and bittersweet farewell as the couple makes a grateful exit from the spotlight to pursue new creative endeavours.
A moment like this tempts a parade of cliches. It’s about the journey, not the destination. It takes two. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But most importantly, as a devout and unwavering romantic, this conversation found me, both hands over heart, more affirmed than ever that love is always going to be the reason for being. For doing. For moving forward.
After almost two decades of partnership, Alaina and Patrick’s admiration for each other is palpable. I caught them at Kilby Block Party this weekend on their final tour as a band.
How has doing press been, knowing this is your last tour? Are you tired of talking about it?
PATRICK: Actually, a question we’ve only been asked a few times is in regards to what has changed over the last few years that may have made making music different for us, and that’s the core reason why we’re needing a break. We started out in the DIY scene. We didn’t have merchandise, just our seven inches, and we only played shows. We didn’t have social media. It was all great, but it really has changed.
ALAINA: Now you have to be an empire. You have to take on so many different roles, and expectations for artists have grown since the 90s. Then, you could just make records, you didn’t even have to have your picture on the album cover.
PATRICK: You didn’t have to be in the music video.
ALAINA: Now you need to be more of a personality. I don’t mind any of those things, but we’re both pretty internal people, and the external self that we have to present to the world becomes quite taxing for both of us. I guess we just didn’t sign up for that. And the whole music landscape has changed, too. There’s no more blogs, which I honestly think was the last good time for music. I miss humans curating music! I miss going to a trusted source: someone who really loves music or a specific genre of music and is really knowledgeable. I don’t like algorithmic-driven curation.
PATRICK: My favorite music of all time is music that I didn’t enjoy on first listen and someone said, just give it one more chance. Then I did, and it blew my mind.
ALAINA: Yeah, because it’s usually music that challenges your taste a little bit. I feel like now, it’s really hard when everything in the world is saying that the first 10 seconds of a song has to capture someone’s attention. And if you skip it once, you’re penalized forever.
Radio comes immediately to mind, especially when you mention human curation. AI-generated DJs don’t have the same spirit, or any spirit at all.
ALAINA: It literally is soulless.
PATRICK: This is just us complaining.
ALAINA: Yeah, we’re so grateful. We have loved that we’ve been able to have a career as musicians in a band.
PATRICK: Every few years, we’re like, are we still going to be a band?
ALAINA: It’s a tenuous career. But we’ve always known that. So those are things that we’re happy to step away from. If it was only music and only fan interaction, then we would do it forever. And we’ll continue in creative endeavours forever: something with music, something with writing. It’s just going to be different.
Is there anything that you’re particularly excited about devoting more time and energy to, now that you’re tapping the brakes on this project?
ALAINA: Yes, absolutely. For me, I’ve started to feel constrained by lyric writing. I love writing songs, it’s so rewarding, but the limitations of cadence, melody, and sometimes rhyme schemes often make me feel like I can’t say exactly what I want to say in the way I want to say it. Pat hears me feeling frustrated all the time about having an amazing thing I wanted to say, but the song won’t let me do it. The song has its own demands. So I would love to write essays or books and be able to express myself in a way where the language is at the forefront instead of secondary to melody.
PATRICK: I have been so cerebral for the last 10 years with our band that I’m honestly so excited to move towards physicality. I weirdly want to do manual labor. Something that doesn’t have to do with my brain.
ALAINA: Patrick is the mastermind behind the band and the reason why it has lasted all of these years. He’s our business manager, our tour manager. He keeps the books. It’s a lot of cerebral work, yes, and a lot of formulaic work. We’ve been talking about how you can barely play guitar anymore because you’re too busy doing administrative work.
Well that’s a huge bummer. I hope a slower pace awaits you both.
ALAINA: He’s literally keeping the band going all the time, so yeah, I can’t wait for him to be free!
You’re life partners and creative partners, and it seems notions of love have always sat at the core of what you make. Has your understanding of love changed shape as you’ve been on this road together?
PATRICK: Yeah, running something like this together and dealing with all the intricacies of releasing an album has always been something that strains our relationship, but we’ve always found a way to isolate that part and essentially turn it off at the end of the night. It’s sometimes really hard to do, but we’ve been able to do it. And we’re lucky in that department because for some people, it blends over into their relationship.
ALAINA: My concept of love has evolved with time, but mostly because it has evolved alongside our marriage. We’ve been together for 17 years, and it has been amazing. We’ve watched it change and deepen. I actually wrote a song about this, “Matrimony II,” on our 10-year anniversary. There’s a line that goes, “love that’s slow like the longest breath.” It’s so different from that burning flame of first attraction or first falling in love. I still feel that burning flame, but it’s so different now. It’s more like molten lava core. *laughs*
PATRICK: I was going to say uranium fire. You can’t put it out with water, try all you want.
Damn, that’s so romantic. Love like this seems hard to find but worth grasping immediately when you do. I’m 23, so I think I still have time.
ALAINA: That’s how old we were when we got married!
Oh…
ALAINA: It wasn’t by choice! My parents are very religious. We had been living together for a while, and they were having a meltdown over it. So we got married for them, and we were pretty unromantic. It was very transactional.
PATRICK: We just thought that if marriage ruined it, we’d get divorced and go back to dating.
ALAINA: But as soon as we got married, I suddenly was like, oh my god, my husband. I loved it. I didn’t think I would, but I really love being married. I’m so glad we did it.
Where did you meet?
PATRICK: We were in college, and she served me breakfast! It was a week prior to the first class I took with her. I recognized her and was like, hey! You served me breakfast the other day! I sat next to her, and we immediately became really close friends.
ALAINA: He sat next to me and after a week of lightly flirting with me, he drew me this giraffe. I later got it tattooed on me so I could look at it forever.
