Electronic-pop duo Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern, a.k.a. Sofi Tukker, have made a name for themselves by drawing from some of the most far-reaching sounds and influences in dance music. Their hook-packed 2018 debut studio album, Treehouse, is infused with tropicália and house, and strewn with ukuleles and stuttering percussion, and their follow-up, Wet Tennis, continues in this tradition.
The album’s ecstatic, hilarious title track (replete with choice double entendres) features a GRiZ-esque brass section, as well as two consecutive breakdowns—one that strips the song back to just Hawley-Weld’s voice and an acoustic guitar, and another that gradually ramps up to a wall of sound. Similarly, the opening track, “Kakee,” showcases Sofi Tukker’s appetite for varied textures, with rattling cowbells, western-tinged guitars, and a furious kick drum.
Songs like “Kakee” continue the duo’s collaboration with Brazilian poet Chacal, who helped craft lyrics in Portuguese on a few of the album’s cuts. The magnanimous charm of both the vocals and arrangements—Hawley-Weld and Halpern work the boards and play a variety of instruments—makes their hodgepodge of sonic sources come off naturally.
In another of the album’s pure blasts of serotonin, the propulsive “Larry Bird” incorporates an addictive combination of woodwinds and steel drum for a joyous bit of club fodder. It’s also a song that’s indicative of what sets Sofi Tukker apart from their peers. While other EDM artists wield pop-cultural references as empty signifiers, Hawley-Weld and Halpern make them sneakily personal. Halpern was a division one basketball player and his father lends vocals to a mid-song interlude imitating a commentator/hype man for Larry Bird. This intimate wrinkle, combined with the track’s frothy, goofball energy, elevate what could’ve been a flimsy joke.
The standout “Original Sin,” which centers on two people connecting over being damaged goods, features an oddly moving and wistful vocal from Hawley-Weld that conjures a discomfiting brokenness even amid the throbbing bass and brisk hi-hats. Elsewhere, “Sun Came Up” is a house thumper whose minor-key guitar licks and haunted vocals, with Hawley-Weld singing at a much slower pace than the song’s meter and Tucker intoning in pitch-shifted back-up, suggest that the partying until dawn described by the lyrics has taken its toll. The song feels at once kinetic and depleted—and, miraculously, it works.
Wet Tennis stages a 35-minute dance party that’s tempered, as well as bolstered, by notes of reflective melancholy. The album is predominantly ebullient in spirit, though, and it all comes to a head on “Mon Cheri,” a bona fide floor filler featuring the incomparable Amadou & Mariam. The septuagenarian pair, longtime purveyors of Afro-blues, lend their vivacious vocals and nimble guitar-playing to the track, trading verses with Hawley-Weld and urged along by a metronomic beat. It’s as representative a creation as you’ll find on Wet Tennis: a celebration of globalism, love, and exuberance flowing from a wellspring of sources.
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