Hooton Tennis Club are a Wirral foursome comprised of Ryan Murphy (vocals/guitar), James Madden (guitar/vocals), Callum McFadden (bass) and Harry Chalmers (drums). 'Highest Point in Cliff Town' is an album about the finer things in life – but by finer I'm not referring to some lavish lifestyle they're all supposed to leading with free-flowing champagne and limousine rides, I mean the smaller, more minute details in their day to day lives. Like making a cup of tea. Or getting the train. Or going for a walk. But it works – in fact it works pretty damn well.
After all these Hooton lads seem like a lot of fun. Their music is just...fun, plain and simple. The mundane/magical song titles like 'Kathleen Sat On The Arm Of Her Favourite Chair' and '...And Then Camilla Drew Fourteen Dots On Her Knee' are inspired – you hear titles like that and you just know the songs will be good. They have to be really. Their music brings these otherwise boring and bizarre scenarios to life in continuous waves of colour, with the bright and fuzzy guitar riffs and solo parts that are deceptively simplistic but give away a deep understanding of melody and how to enrich a track using sound – very much like Graham Coxon. In fact if the boys from Blur aren't one of the band's main influences I'd be shocked. It's always a good thing to be influenced by Blur.
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This is the sound of a group of lads in their prime, celebrating their lives up to this point and raising a pint in the air to the future as well. Which isn't really anything to do with the lyrics as much as it is the joy and fun-loving sound they've created.
It's never pretentious, but its never downright silly either. OK maybe it can be downright silly, but it's certainly never unintelligent. Hooton Tennis Club are a band who deal only in hits and probably couldn't put out a dull song if they tried. Songs like 'Jasper' and 'P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L.P.I.E.R.R.E' are instantly catchy little numbers that will make you wish you'd been in at the ground floor for their live gigs. If you were there from the start then you've probably seen them in a packed out small venue in Liverpool blowing the roof off with these tunes, with a bouncing crowd who know every word.
That's how I picture it'll be when I step off the lift at the first floor and start playing catch up anyway. After that they're obviously just a band to follow all the way to top.
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