Hooton Tennis Club on friendship, new guitars and songwriting

Green Door Store, Trafalgar Arches, Brighton, Tuesday, October 27

FROM their song titles alone its clear Wirral-based Hooton Tennis Club isn’t just chucking out lyrics at the last minute in the studio.

Very few bands could come up with titles like Much Quicker Than Anyone But Jennifer Could Ever Imagine, Kathleen Sat On The Arm Of Her Favourite Chair or ...And Then Camilla Drew 14 Dots On Her Knee.

And within those lyrics are references to changing the wallpaper on your phone to stave off boredom in Up In The Air, a pinpoint picture of the end of a party in Barlow Terrace and a heartfelt tribute to frontman Ryan Murphy’s departed grandfather in Jasper – highlighting memories of walking around art galleries together and the favourite Turner print he had on his wall.

Murphy admits the band takes time to craft its lyrics – while at the same time ensuring the guitar-driven music is captured quickly to keep it fresh and energetic.

“Me and James [Madden, guitarist] are always writing, filling little notebooks with ideas and scraps of lyrics,” he says. “Sometimes at the end of an evening I just write a few things about the day and draw on that later on. If you’re sitting down to write a song it’s handy to have those pages filled with words to go back to and look at.”

Murphy and Madden founded the band with schoolmates bassist Callum McFadden and drummer Harry Chalmers in 2013 once Murphy had returned from a job selling live tour CDs on Robbie Williams’ European tour.

The songs, which Murphy says date back three or four years, were written and recorded in snatches between time off work, or band members returning from holiday.

“We were limited to what we had,” he says.

“We’d got an eight track recorder and a few microphones. We were in Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff, all over the place, just trying to get as many songs together as quickly as possible. We didn’t have a lot of time, money or the right equipment.”

The band was signed to Heavenly Records after being scouted by The Farm bassist Carl Hunter, and set to work on a full album with another refugee from a successful Liverpool band – Bill Ryder Jones of The Coral.

“Bill was right on the same page,” says Murphy.

“As soon as we were introduced we felt at home with him. He had the same musical interests and the same jokes – it worked really easily. He knew when to take it seriously, and when to **** around with us. We’re going to work with him again – he’s a real legend.”

He’s still a little surprised at the reactions the band is getting to the songs he wrote in his bedroom.

“It’s hard to talk about,” he says. “The album is a collection of our best stuff over those years – the next album we do, if we do another one, will be a different process as we will have less time.”

He compares the way they put songs together at the moment to the same way a painter approaches a canvas.

“A lot of painters start off just getting their idea on the canvas in five or ten minutes,” he says. “If you’re someone like Frank Auerbach you take the paint off the canvas and put it on again – it can take years until he’s finished what he’s painting. As a band if we’re happy with a song that’s when we decide to stop.

“There’s no formula or secret tricks, every time is different.”

As the band all went to school together they were already close when they started hitting the road.

“There’s arguments and times when we don’t talk, but it’s all healthy,” says Murphy. “It’s really special that we are friends from school – it adds to the way we write.

“When me and James were at uni four or five years ago we had girls we liked and we would write songs about them. I could tell from his song he liked a girl that I liked first!

“Now it’s easier to share a song like Jasper – about when my granddad passed away. They all got it.”

The band is trying to write on the road as they tour debut album Highest Point In Cliff Town.

And with the addition of some new guitars they can sense the sound and approach on new songs is already changing.

“We thought it was a bit too rock to have lots of guitars and technicians, but you need them when you are going from songs like Spokes [with its slow feedback heavy churn] to Standing Knees [which has more classic rock tones],” says Murphy.

“The new guitars are adding to the sound – it’s developing from what it used to be. We have got more comfortable with the songs.

“It’s kind of like having a new toy - suddenly it’s like we’ve never played music before.”

Doors 7.30pm, tickets £6. Call 01273 606312.