Album Review
Hooton Tennis Club - Highest Point In Cliff Town
4 StarsA debut that’s utterly irresistible.
There are students who go on luxurious gap years full of twenty-four hour parties on tropical islands and sky diving trips on the other side of the world. On the other hand, others spend them trying to scrape a few bits of change together for the following term; working banal jobs and having deadbeat summers that are entirely absent from their jammy friends. Hooton Tennis Club are the essential soundtrack to getting through that summer of mundanity, delivering in ‘Highest Point In Cliff Town’ a record of romantic, nostalgic pop music that shimmers in the sunlight like Parquet Courts getting through a semester abroad.
“I spent the best days of my life / travelling on trains and drawing cartoons,” singer Ryan Murphy drawls on ‘Kathleen Sat On The Arm Of Her Favourite Chair’, its infectious riff flicking by like the pages of an old Polaroid photo album; sepia-toned and full of youthful vitality. There’s an obvious comparison to Pavement to be made, but Hooton Tennis Club’s lyrics are far more coherent and direct than Malkmus’, ultimately crafting poetic justice out of our blandest thoughts. ‘Always Coming Back 2 You’ - an absolute corker of a track that beckons repeated listens - revels in teenage lust and yet leaves a yearning feeling of love in the stomach that’s all too familiar no matter what your age - a feeling Murphy absolutely nails in his razor-sharp lines.
In ‘Highest Point In Cliff Town’, Hooton Tennis Club have produced a debut that’s utterly irresistible: a summer soundtrack that makes staring out of the train window significantly less mundane; an album that restores positivity in the type of Mondays that Courtney Barnett knows oh so well. It’s a record stuffed with American indie familiarities - Teenage Fanclub, Guided by Voices, even Big Star - but most importantly, Hooton Tennis Club sport a distinct British eccentricity that’ll undoubtedly launch them to the masses.
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