Tennis (Denver based husband and wife duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley) recently released “In The Morning I’ll Be Better", a promotional single for their upcoming fourth album Yours Conditionally (2017). The track's harmony-laden production (which layers Moore's vocals beautifully) bears similarities to their last album Rituals in Release(2015), but there's a heightened amount of gauziness that suits the video's retro visuals and sonic inspirations well:
'I'll write your cares awayThat I might spare you painLet everybody say that I'm gone for youSay you're my babyWe're sublimating
I'll write a hymn again(I'll write a hymn again)I'll be your woman (woman)Keep on believing itI brought healingOh, baby
I'll wrap myself aroundYou where we can't be foundI'll hide you from the world'Til we're forgottenSay you're my babyWe're sublimating'
Lyrics: AZLyrics.com
Given the nature of their collaboration, its hardly surprising that Tennis' musical output focuses heavily on romantic relationships. Their upcoming album suggests a greater maturity and complexity, however, with a title that qualifies romantic ideals with feminist imperatives: "How much am I willing to belong to the ones I love? How much am I wiling to belong to an audience that I don't know but need? How much am I willing to belong to you? I only know that I am yours conditionally" (Alaina Moore, Noisey).
The need for self-possession will presumably feature in the album's other tracks. “In The Morning I’ll Be Better" focuses on the importance of mutual interdependence in a relationship; its lyrics was inspired by an episode where Moore needed to provide emotional support to Riley:
"I had written this gospel-like chord progression but everything I tried to do with it sounded predictable so I threw it out. Patrick found it months later buried in a folder of forgotten demos and immediately wrote this frantic, way over the top drum beat. That solved the song for both of us. Lyrics were the final obstacle. I didn't finish them until four months later while we were sailing. Patrick was coping with the serious illness of a loved-one, and I found myself trying to comfort him. The impulse worked its way into the song, 'I'll write your cares away that I might spare you pain… I'll hide you from the world until we're forgotten.' Faced with losing a loved one, while we ourselves were at risk on the ocean, made us strangely somber yet optimistic. We felt the precariousness of our lives and said to it: in the morning I'll be better."
Alaina Moore, Noisey
