Hotel Lux are turning adversity to advantage

Hotel Lux’s bass player Cam Sims is musing on self-doubt, a quandary of a band whose music so often explores the perspectives of life’s outsiders. With the arrival of the group’s debut record Hands Across the Creek, many of the tracks do just that – with “Eastbound and Down” exploring the jealousy of observing Canary Wharf-types on the tube, while “National Team” is a despondently catchy meditation on the fact that people one’s own age play sports at an international level. The band's adoption of these peripheral viewpoints begins to make more sense when we learn that, though they are known as a South London band, Hotel Lux’s journey didn’t start in the capital.

As frontman Lewis Duffin explains, their story begins in Portsmouth, where much of the band went to college. “I feel quite bad for the promoters in Portsmouth. The council never got on board with the idea of having any sort of music scene there and closed the majority of small venues down.” To deal with this cultural void, some of Portsmouth’s underserved community made regular pilgrimage to The Joiners in Southampton; a grass-roots venue ideal for aspiring musicians. “I remember going there once or twice a month to see whatever band was touring at that point. That’s where we got to know Cam and a lot of our mates from around that area.” This hub allowed the future line up of Hotel Lux to catch acts like Palma Violets, often on their first tours, and learn the ropes themselves in a slew of early bands. In particular, Cam moved through more than six bands prior to Hotel Lux, continuing “the thing with The Joiners is that it was a relatively small cap but had a big stage so if you just brought all your mates along you could feel like a rockstar for the evening, even if you sold just 50 tickets.”

Despite talking warmly about their origins in Portsmouth, Cam wryly admits, “we did all have to cop out and move to London in the end. We were meant to be hometown heroes but it didn’t quite work.” It wasn’t all wasted time of course, and Lewis retorts that their time on the coast likely helped them in the long run. “We were in bands that were not very good at all when we were in Portsmouth. We were allowed to do that and move to London where no one knew about our dirty little secrets.” The decision to move was spurred on by a communally made playlist aptly titled 'London Band'. The list was chock full of pub-rock and new wave staples like Ian Dury, The Stranglers, and Dr. Feelgood, as well as newer influences like Australian alt-pop aficionado Alex Cameron, whose presence can be felt in Hotel Lux to this day.

For the group, their exodus to London happened at a moment of serendipity. Arriving on the scene in 2017, a particular buzz was forming around The Windmill in Brixton and its slew of post-punk acts. The band were quickly able to play opening slots for South London favourites Shame, Sorry, and HMLTD. As Lewis recalls, “I kind of feel uncomfortable presenting ourselves as outsiders because we did kind of hop on that Windmill zeitgeist.” Cam agrees, explaining “we made friends with the Shame boys pretty early. They were on the up and gave us some pretty great opportunities to play with them. We played our Europe tour when we had released two songs which is pretty crazy, and that was purely because they could just bring their mates. We are obviously grateful for that.”

The band were on a high and, as 2020 dawned, things were only getting better as they released their Barstool Preaching EP – even able to muster a triumphant homecoming in Southampton. “We played at The Joiners during our first headline tour just before Covid. It was where my parents first saw us.” But, as the story went for so many, the pandemic fired an enormous spanner into the works. Painfully, all the band’s shows, including their much anticipated debut stateside appearance at SXSW, were cancelled. Lewis remembers the pain of it well, “it felt like we were gonna waste those glory years away.”

On top of their shows being cancelled, every aspect of the band’s creative process was disrupted. As Lewis puts it, “the songs I’d most like to write would be story-based, but because we were writing the songs over lockdown, we kind of had to go inward. It was hard to go outward because there was nothing to say. How much can you talk about sitting in your bedroom watching TV all day?”

This confinement, a perhaps ironic twist of fate for a band named after a Stalinist hotel for communist exiles, could have spelled doom and gloom for the group. Yet, the limitations placed on them just as they were hitting their stride carried some unexpected positives. “When we were writing before we felt this ‘eyes on us’ thing. When we were writing in lockdown there were no eyes on anyone really,” Cam admits. “No one was checking in on us to see if we were making the next post-punk anthem.” Lewis agrees, “it really felt like there was no one to impress. It felt for the first time that we were writing the songs that we wanted to. There were no boxes to tick. We weren’t thinking about playing them live.” As Cam continues, this sense of abandon emerged as an oddly beneficial side-effect to doom-scroll-fuelled pessimism. “We didn’t even know if we would ever play the songs live. I know that sounds really dramatic, but we wrote it with the thought that there may never be a second album.” The result is a slew of honest, contemplative, and moving tracks that cleverly mix social commentary with self reflection; exploring themes of masculinity, ageing, and inadequacy.

The conversation turns to the fact that many artists (including the aforementioned Alex Cameron) who write heartfelt, self reflective records, cut their teeth inhabiting characters and inventing stories for a few records before baring their own hearts. Cam jokes “it’s usually on album four they do that but we’ve done it on album one.” As I joke that the pressure cooker of lockdown pushed the band three records ahead, Cam retorts “this was our Libertines Thailand retreat!” Joining in, Lewis suggests that “what every band seems to say is 'it was our most personal album yet', but for us it’s the only one!” As is often the case, limitations can push artists in interesting new directions, sort the wheat from the chaff, and enable them to stumble across aspects of their work that might otherwise have been missed.

As it turned out, the plague years did come to an end and Hotel Lux are back in business, gearing themselves up for a UK and Europe tour starting in February. With a pandemic fallout that seems to have pushed many musicians to make the music they really want, Cam observes that "the scene has become a lot more experimental and carefree. There seems to be this post-lockdown, ‘fuck it, let’s throw the kitchen sink at it’ thing which a lot of bands are doing which is great. You won’t go to a show and just see four post-punk bands now.” He momentarily pauses to check himself and laughs. “I might be completely wrong, I've listened to the same three artists for the last five years.” With the release of Hands Across the Creek, treat yourself to one of the pandemic’s unexpected silver linings and book an extended stay at Hotel Lux.