No one was surprised when Tennis, comprised of real-life married couple Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley (and drummer James Barone), was signed to Fat Possum Records in 2010.

The truth surrounding the act’s first record, “Cape Dory,” has the appearance of a well-manicured shtick put on by big business to sell records and t-shirts: husband and wife find both are musically-inclined beings, write songs about their seven-month sailing voyage along the East Coast, share the songs with close friends, then watch as the songs are shared on the Internet, quite successfully. Cocktail parties became bar shows, and eventually the band was signed by Fat Possum.

Cape Dory, one of the more underrated albums of 2011, was an audio beacon of hope during the dreary winter of 2011. With its sunshine-pop and unabashed lovey-dovey-ness, the album was one continuous “I love you” from Moore to Riley, who responds with his guitar.

The band’s second full-length release, produced by The Black Keys’ drummer Patrick Carney, takes that familiar pop resonance and sands it down to create a gravelly atmosphere that masks what critics may call Cape Dory Vol. 2.

“Young and Old” doesn’t rely on the Hammond organ that, when married with Riley’s twinkly guitar, defined the first album. It’s more of a detriment to the band’s sound and appears to be a situation of fixing what isn’t broken.

Yet the band cannot be faulted for exploring different realms of music (albeit, closely-located realms to the brand of pop). The turn to lo-fi comes from the lo-fi trend in rock n’ roll, which is on the outs unfortunately.

“Young and Old” starts out with a bang. Likely to be a single, “It All Feels the Same” is a perfect opening track — a bridge between “Cape Dory” and “Young and Old.” The chord progressions build up to a point where the subconscious just assumes where it will go next, only to be disappointed (for only a second) with a different turn. The buzzing synth in place of the Hammond announces to the audience a new sound.

But “Young and Old” fails to continue what the first tracks promised. “Petition” starts out as a late-50’s toe-tapper soul piece but devolves into a mid-90’s R&B chorus that doesn’t quite match anything Tennis does and is, quite frankly, annoying. “Robin” steps back to “Cape Dory,” but only briefly, as the record moves on like the track wasn’t supposed to be included, only to be followed one track later by “Dreaming,” which sounds like Christmas in August on a beach in New England.

It’s tough not to compare “Young and Old” to “Cape Dory,” but for a band with two full-length albums, the comparisons are inevitable. The record doesn’t have peaks and valleys; rather it sounds like one more fuzzy pop song followed quickly by a different variant of the previous song. Tennis’ unique sound, however, doesn’t mean this is a bad thing.

“Young and Old” shows a different side of Tennis—one that mirrors the unpredictability and diversity of the sea, which served as a major influence in the construction of their songs. But this multiplicity neglects what the band did to perfection on Cape Dory and instead creates a sense of “Ahoy Polloi” that evokes the ever-present love that oozed out of the first album from every crevice.