Hooten Tennis Club’s follow up to last summer’s Highest Point In Cliff Town is extreamly impresive, and with Edwyn Collins on production duties they have realised their true pop potential. It has a looseness like the first album still evident on Big Box of Chocolates, but made shiny and new under Collins’ watchful eye.
With no difficult second album issues, Hooton Tennis Club made massive strides in short fourteen months since Cliff Town gigging constitenly. Live they’re more disciplined while retaining that engaging sense of fun, and on this album, lyricists Ryan Murphy and James Madden‘s always sideways observations of life, are as clever as ever. Each track on Big Box of Chocolates is a short story of sorts, emotions laid more honestly here than by its predecessor, showing a growing confidence . Tales of friendships, the notion of an era at an end as a flatmate moves out in Katy-Anne Bellis carries a coming of age melancholia, a sense of innocence now passed.
Statue Of The Greatest Woman I Know presents us with a surf guitar surprise, and Lauren, I’m In Love! brings out the biggest smiles, a cute Happy Days love letter to the 6 Music presenter. O Man, Won’t You Melt Me? touches the tenderest spot, and breaks our hearts. ‘I can tell that her man’s not me, it’s not me / Why would she change it all for me?’ Blimey, woman – whoever you are, give the lad a break, will you?
It’s only the final song on the record, the title track, on the album though feels like a slight hangover from Highest Point In Cliff Town, dragging its feet in an effort to keep up. But the album Big Box of Chocolates, for the most part, is proof Hooton Tennis Club are reaching maturity. This is a bloody good record.
Here’s the clip (as promised) for ‘O Man, Won’t You Melt Me?’, (apt title for 2016?) Watch us roll around and frolic in clusters of vivid autumnal coloured rotting leaves for near 4 minutes.
‘Oh, Man Won’t You Melt Me’ by Hooton Tennis Club from the album ‘Big Box of Chocolates.’ Out on Heavenly Recordings, produced by Edwyn Collins.
The Fat Angel Sings 