Whiting Tennis, 3-Way Stitch
(Rendezvous) The way I know him, Whiting Tennis is a visual artist, a maker of objects that seem to drag long, tiring lives with them into a gallery or museum, sort of like the sad-eyed artist himself. As a musician, Tennis and his band (Tennis on vocals and electric guitar, D. W. Burnam on vocals and drums, Kevin Warner on vocals and bass, and Tom Price on keyboard) have a similar world-weariness that comes across as the pleasurable sound of low blood pressure. On their MySpace page, the band is listed as “Indie/Folk Rock/Other,” but to me it’s more reverb country. I’m grateful they’re out at all: Tennis’s band in New York, the Scholars, was determined to play only in libraries—so they ended up playing only in his DUMBO painting studio. JEN GRAVES