Sports Team have always found themselves somewhere between satire and sincerity, between the everyday and the absurd. Now, performing at the Glasgow School of Art following the release of the deluxe edition of Boys These Days, the band are energised by the contradictions that have defined their rise: the love of guitar music in a space that often shrugs at it; the maximalist showmanship; the increasingly ambitious sound from a group that still joke about only just learning to play their instruments.
Their new expanded record captures a band tearing into the contradictions of modern life, all the while with a grin on their face. Frontman Alex Rice described waking up to “18,000 insane narratives before you’re out of bed”. The album’s discography is a reflection of just that – self aware and always half a step from boiling over.
No matter the success of the album, the heart of Sports Team remains grounded within their live performances. Ask any fan and they’ll insist that the chaos of a Sports Team set is its own ecosystem. It’s sweaty and unpredictable yet communal. People leave with bruises and stories, and the occasional pic of them atop a human pyramid. If you needed any more proof of how disarmingly down to earth and tongue in cheek the band remains, amid all the pre-show carnage, ten minutes before stepping on stage they gifted me – the interviewer – with a Nature Valley bar as a token of appreciation. A tiny gesture, but a perfect snapshot of the strange, warm and slightly unhinged generosity that defines Sports Team.
It’s an ethos they forged long before their chart battles with Gaga or feuds with Matty Healy made the headlines. Years of cramming themselves into vans, playing every pub in Britain “five times over” have created the very environment that fuels them, one where being a band is meant to be fun, messy and defiantly uncool.
Their spirit thrives in this new expanded record. Songs like Subaru (I’m In Love) lean into a romantic absurdity that is quintessentially Sports Team. Others trace more serious territory surrounding burnout, political noise and gun violence in the West. It’s a record full of contradictions, exactly where the band thrive.
Onstage in Glasgow, that tension turns into electricity. Rice paces like a man discovering the
stage for the first time, with the band behind him pushing the set between quiet precision and total collapse. Even as the venues change and the stunts get stranger – including paintball gauntlets and desert video shoots that never see the light of day – Sports Team still approach music like a shared joke, one in which the audience gets to be a part of. Their fan driven world, whether online or in packed rooms, feels unusually democratic for a modern guitar band.
At the Glasgow School of Art, the bond is close enough to touch. Songs swell louder than on the album, with the older tunes erupting like rituals. You are filled with the sense you’re watching a band who understand exactly what they’ve built, and precisely how precarious, hilarious and strangely meaningful it all is.
With Boys These Days, and an upcoming fourth album, Sports Team are evolving. And yet they’re doing what they always have done, turning the chaos of modern life into something loud, communal and quite frankly a little bit ridiculous. If there’s a better environment for that than a Glasgow crowd midweek, we haven’t found it.
Ben Mailer (he/him) is a writer for the Strathclyde Telegraph, co-host of the Microphone Tax radio show, and 4th year International Business and Finance Student. He mainly writes about music, culture, and interviews, with a particular interest in indie scenes and experimental art.
Outside of writing, he’s usually at gigs, digging through record shops, or working on radio projects.
You can find him on Instagram at @ben.mailer_.
Leave a Reply