Hooton Tennis Club came out of nowhere. After playing three gigs in 2013, the band was signed to Heavenly Records. Within the space of six months after their signing, their debut album ‘Highest Point in Clifftown’ was released. Hailing from the Wirral, the foursome, (composed of Ryan Murphy – vocals / guitar, James Madden – guitar / vocals, Callum McFadden — bass, Harry Chalmers — drums) took to the stage in the tiny Brudenell Games Room to a modest audience. Opening their hour long set with ‘Up in the Air;’ three minutes of tempo-changing psychedelic brilliance, the band seemed absorbed, yet at ease in their sound. And the spectators were too. With a concoction of jangly guitar thrashing reminiscent of Parquet Courts or The Libertines, and the DIY qualities of Daniel Johnson and Deerhunter, they performed both casually and effortlessly. However, it is precisely this rough-around-the-edges quality which makes them so alluring and soulful, especially in Ryan and James’s Lou Reed-like spoken vocal. Perhaps the musical equivalent of a lazy summer afternoon, tracks like ‘Always Coming Back 2 You’ with its quasi-improvisational guitar licks and maudlin melodies channeled an honest and charming depiction of lovelorn adolescence, whilst grungier numbers such as ‘P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L. P.I.E.R.R.E’ thrust onlookers into a big and bulky chorus not too unfamiliar to Blur’s ‘Charmless Man.’ In any case, it is their beguiling lyricism and oddball narratives that stand out most.  Hooton Tennis Club are perhaps the quintessential narrator’s of the angst, boredom and the freedom of late-teen adolescence and its passing into adulthood. Their charismatic and often fantastically bizarre poetries often make even the most banal of topics spectacular, from bland jobs and completing a crossword puzzle to changing the wallpaper on an iPhone. If Hooton Tennis Club were a film, it would look like a Wes Anderson picture: quirky, peculiar and innocent. Whether it’s their casual style or their lyricism, it’s nice to find a band that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Anton Witchell-Chibber