Monolith Cocktail Blog

Kalporz interviews Wilson Hernandez of Tennis Club
Words: Monica Mazzoli




Continuing our content swap with the leading Italian culture/music site Kalporz, the Monolith Cocktail is excited to be hosting Monica Mazzoli‘s recent interview with Wilson Hernandez of the burgeoning Missouri, USA band Tennis Club.





Elefant Records, an independent record label based in Spain, has given a most extensively considered production to guitar and electro pop music over the years.

In 2019 Elefant has already released the second – wonderful – album by the French band Le SuperHomard (entitled Meadow Lane Park) and the Attic Lights comeback album (Love in the Time of Shark Attacks).

Pink, the new mini-LP by Tennis Club was released on May 31th and will probably be on the same wavelength as the two great records I just mentioned. The band, which hails from Missouri (USA), features Wilson Hernandez (vocals, guitar), Tehya Deardorff (instead of Justin Akin – bass) and Sean O’Dell (drums). They have already released an essential nine-track cassette of great surf garage pop songs.

For the occasion of the recent album launch we had a chat with the Club’s guitarist/vocalist Hernandez – the interview was actually conducted just before the official release of Pink.



Q: In 2017 you released your first Cassette, a record that sounds like The Beach Boys, if they’d made a lo-fi album: surf-garage pop songs (and killer chorus) with a noisy, shoegazy attitude. Now your new mini Album, Pink, is going to be released soon on 31st May. The two tracks that are already available – ‘Pink Sweater! Pink Shoes!’ and ‘Mexico City (Rich Girls)’ – show a new approach: I mean, it seems to me that you’re going in new directions, the first single is the “old” Tennis Club sound; the second single is more jangle pop with the singing in Spanish.

A: Yes, we were going for a more pop sound on this album; our first album was very distorted and noisy and this record focused on a softer sound, sweeter lyrics and more focus on vocal harmonies like on the early Beatles albums.

Elefant Records, a Spanish record label, decided to release your new mini LP. How did it happen? From Missouri to Spain…

I started listening to a lot of Spanish music, my mother is from El Salvador so I speak it decently and I started looking into Spanish labels when I found Elefant and saw that they had such a great appreciation for indie pop that I thought we would fit in well. So I sent an early version of Pink to Luis at Elefant and thankfully he liked it!

We usually say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. But the cover, the packaging of Pink is so amazing, in a “twee pop way”, it reminded me of Jamboree by Beat Happening.

Yes, I agree! The album art is very twee and I think it fits the aesthetic of the album very well. It was made by friend Ela Hosp who has this very simple but one of a kind unique style: you can check out more of her art on Instagram @elahosp.