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Thursday, August 26, 2010

Music Tonight at Glasslands: A Bunch of Good Bands

Posted by Lauren Beck on Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 4:49 PM

Tennis, a husband-wife duo based in Denver, have been the talk of the town this week, at least in blog talk, having just sold out their 7'' EP on Underwater Peoples and playing two NY gigs. The second is tonight at Glasslands, hence the reason for this blog post. "Oh, I hear twee-ish vocals and some fuzz," I said the first time I listened. "This song 'Marathon' sounds disjointed in a way that reminds me of that other band I think is majorly underrated called WOOM. Boy, it's catchy." Then the hooks started kicking around in my head, and the melodies, lo-fi as they may be, stuck out as hard-hitting and purposeful. So, there's that.

The real selling point, though, is that the songs were recorded while the couple sailed along the Atlantic Coast, culled from material that was originally intended as merely a means of documenting their eight-month long trip at sea. So came songs like "Baltimore," "South Carolina," "Cape Dory" and "Bimini Bay," all capturing the quirkiness that you would imagine from two people who saved up enough money to buy a sailboat without any sailing experience.

Tonight, they'll be playing with a solid cast of supporting bands. Magic Bullets do a tropical-jangle thing, labelmates Family Portrait may have written the best summer jam of '09, and Cool Runnings I just like because I assume the John Candy movie of the same name means something to them. Never heard of Night Manager before, but I'm listening now, to a song called "Blackout Sex." Doors at 9pm, buy advance tickets here for $8, $10 at the door. Videos after the jump.

Tennis - "Marathon"