If Tennis’ debut album, Cape Dory, was a narrative of a specific time and sensation, the Denver group’s follow-up, Young and Old, is its antithesis. The new disc, recorded in Nashville with Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, embraces a grander landscape of ideas and feelings, revealing a riskier, looser version of the band. Cape Dory, released in January of 2011, chronicled a sailing voyage embarked upon by band members and married couple Patrick Riley and Alaina Moore, who met while in college in Denver, and was never intended to be shared. 

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Young and Old, in some ways a reaction to its predecessor, represents the first time Riley and Moore have penned tracks that are meant for those outside themselves. “We wrote Cape Dory almost by accident and after playing those 10 songs over and over for ten months we knew exactly what we wanted to be playing onstage each night,” Moore says. “We were compelled right away to write this new record and it came very quickly. This is the first time we wrote songs for the sake of sharing them and performing them for other people.”

The resulting album retains Tennis’ sparkling indie pop aesthetic, but expands the sonic and thematic elements to include a greater range of styles and ideas. Although Young and Old isn’t a concept album in the way Cape Dory was, this record, which takes its title from a William Butler Yeats poem called “A Woman Young and Old,” finds cohesion even as it expands what the group has previously done. “I didn’t want each song to be in complete isolation from the next,” Moore says. “I wanted them to belong together. I felt like I’d done a lot of reflection personally while spending months on the road contemplating the transition I had made over the past year. I feel like each song is a vignette, a glimpse into a personal moment of mine spanning from childhood to womanhood.” In the end, Young and Old doesn’t so much tell a story as it does chronicle an evolution. It reveals a growing sense of liberation, of musicians coming into their own together. Its melodies are enchanting yet it’s all infused with an edgier tone than Tennis’ debut, a logical next step in the band’s career.