Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2010

The scene resembles “story time” at an elementary school: an enthralled audience, seated cross-legged on a giant carpet, listens to Saya Ueno’s breathy lullaby “Baibaba Bimba” while her husband Takashi strums a simple refrain on guitar. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine yourself floating off over a field of rippling corn and up into the clouds. It’s a typical intimate Tenniscoats performance: no squealing amps, no mosh pits, just a stripped-down sound that throbs with feeling.

Onstage, Saya gently teases Takashi, sticking paper squares on his face and rapping her knuckles on his guitar. But when I meet up with the Tokyo duo in Kichijoji, it’s Saya’s turn to take the flack—she’s half an hour late for our 2pm interview because she slept in. “Saya can sleep!” Takashi jokes.

Though Saya has a childish charm, it’s not of the simpering girlish variety—she just behaves as if she’s not constrained by the rules that bind most adults. This attitude is reflected in her freewheeling approach to composition.

“Sometimes I’m at the venue or I’m traveling before the gig and think, ‘Somehow I’m not satisfied with the set list’—I want to compose and quickly write [a song],” she explains. “There’s something more that I want, some feeling that isn’t there, so just before, I join up the dots and I can see how to proceed.”

Like many Japanese bands, Tenniscoats got its start when its members met at a music club in college. Saya is the main creative force behind the duo—she writes around 80 percent of their output—and the group’s songs are born out of a single image, often of a natural setting. “If there’s no image, there’s no point,” she explains.

The natural world is an important source of inspiration on Tenniscoats’ last album, Two Sunsets, a collaboration with Scottish group The Pastels. Instead of partying hard during the recording, the two bands went hiking to a nearby lake. The last song on the disc, “Start Slowly so we Sound Like a Loch,” opens with the feel of fog gradually clearing in the morning light. The melody starts out unsure and halting, gradually warming up and flowing more smoothly—just like beams of sunlight melting the mist and revealing the vista beyond.

In November, Tenniscoats are off on another collaboration, this time with Swedish electro-acoustic band Tape. The project was the result of a happy cosmic accident: after a gig in Scotland, a promoter they’d never met before invited them to play some dates in Sweden. When they got there, they found they’d been abandoned. “We arrived at the airport and it was really dark, there wasn’t anybody about. Tape, who’d just done a gig in Scotland, were on the same plane. They saw that we were in a fix, so they suggested we take the bus with them,” recalls Takashi with a laugh.

“We’d planned to stay in Sweden for about a week, and because there wasn’t a gig for us to play, we were at a loose end. We asked Tape if they knew of any good gigs, but maybe we made a mistake with our English: when we turned up at the venue we realized they hadn’t recommended a gig but had invited us to play. It was really lucky. It was a good thing our English is so bad.”

I ask Saya if she senses a mystical energy in nature. “Yes,” she replies. “I just read a book about the dialogue between the land and people. It seems there are places that have really amazing vibrations, like Wakayama or Okinawa. I haven’t been there or experienced it, but I believe it.” And does she want to harness this power with her music? “Yes I want to use it, but I don’t have a direct experience of it. Whether it’s there or not, I feel that there are definitely other things more important than the ego. I sense there’s something more important and I want to experience that through music.”

The idea that the ego is unimportant also governs Tenniscoats’ attitude towards live performances. “If there’s a line between the audience and the performer, you suffer a bit—it’s not really comfortable,” says Saya. “I like the light levels to be the same for the performer and the audience, so the audience can sing anytime.” Tenniscoats play frequent intimate gigs in Tokyo—if you feel like going to see the band, prepare to get involved.

Tenniscoats
Indie rock husband-and-wife duo, with special guests Videotapemusic. Oct 8, 7pm, ¥1,500. Enban, Koenji. Tel: 03-5306-2937.