102. Hooton Tennis Club

Rough Trade East

10 September 2015

Hooton Tennis Club were part of that mid-2010s micro-scene where bands apparently named themselves by glancing out the van window: think Car Seat Headrest, Windowsill Whatever, Traffic Cone Ennui. It carried just the right aroma of slack-jawed irony for an era when Hoxton Square baristas believed they were conceptual artists.

Back in 2015 the NME stuck Hooton in its “Ten Bands to Watch” feature, one of those annual lists that now reads like a census of lost tribes. Scroll it a decade later and the names provoke roughly the same recognition as regional branches of Blockbuster. If any of them survived, they’re keeping it quiet. Still, the press sheet for debut album Highest Point in Cliff Town was thick with four-star affirmations, so it was worth a trip to Shoreditch.

What followed was… fine. I think. My diary entry from the night is damning in its minimalism: a photo of four lads under fluorescent lighting, a signed record and precisely zero adjectives. Evidently, the band Sharpie-scrawled on my newly purchased record, muttered pleasantries, and I left with vinyl in hand, only for the memory to evaporate en route to the Overground.

They split the following year, proving that sometimes the “watch list” is really more of a countdown. Rumours suggest they’ve since re-formed, though you’d need forensic equipment to spot them on a festival poster. Some groups explode, some evolve, most just peter out.

If they do fancy another shot at the spotlight, they might start by choosing a name that does away with the bored irony and try with a little more ambition. If Death Cab for Cutie can do it, so can you, because “one to watch” is quite often a death sentence for indie rock.