Tennis - Cape Dory

Let's pretend the band Tennis is actually called The Tennis Balls, and that Cape Dory was actually released in the 60's as a set of 45's instead of a full length album in the 2010-2011 wave of the return-to-the-coast trend. There would be A-sides and B-sides, and if you've been picking up whatever free downloads you could find of Tennis songs throughout 2010, you probably already know and love all of the A-sides. In that case, the only new material Cape Dory offers is those B-sides, which we probably would have loved as much as Take Me Somewhere and Marathon if we had heard them first.


Cape Dory doesn't falter because it doesn't take any chances, instead choosing to remain directly in the middle of the kind of pop music that will always be that kind of pop music. As such, Cape Dory will only be talked about when it is being played, because there simply isn't much to say. It is a reminder of what the pop music formula used to be before rock and disco, before big hair and drum machines, before Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.

Cape Dory will be good until something else comes along, at which point Tennis can either chalk up another adventure to remind us of what we would be hearing on the radio if this actually were the 60's, or fall into the obscurity of the occasional random play on iTunes' shuffle.