Sports Team 'Bang Bang Bang' Their Way into Spring '25
Tomorrow, Sports Team will release their third album, Boys These Days- an impressive feat for any band, albeit taken for granted by many listeners these days. Not to get overtly sentimental, but there is such magnificent beauty in the hours a group spends together, yipping and yapping, riffing and drumming, even saxing in this particular group. Saxing reads like a dirty innuendo, to clarify, saxing as in playing the saxophone.
Sports Team are a sextet - again with the innuendo reads, a group of six. It's few and far between that a somewhat popular band has this many members, and the palpable energy of six manic creatives does not go amiss on this record.
I mean, I'm In Love (Subaru) is dripping in sex-jazz-funk, and whilst it's not quite reached the heights of Tim Buckley, who has an entire Wikipedia subsection dedicated to just that, it sure is a damn good modern take on "sex funk". But wait, the next track, These Days, is almost comically Irish, the choppy keys of Ben Mack and the harmonica riffing forcefully rip me from my Liverpool home and throw me back into the dingy tang pubs of County Down where I'm suddenly fifteen, line-dancing with a bottle of Echo Falls.
When Moving Together began, I was (and still am) genuinely unsure of whether the instrumental was a joke or not, and not because it's bad (it's not), but because it sounds like it's from a classic fucking Brit soap-opera. If you're nostalgic for popping round to yer nan's for a Sundie omnibus, stick this on and you'll be sorted. It's like a grungified Corrie.
By this point, I've realised that this album is all over the place, "not confined to one genre" blah, blah, blah.
That's getting old; it appears genre is a thing of the past, and it's the subgenre/microgenre that's really in, but that's for another time.
Anyway, if you're a fan of the genres of dance, funk, and punk, then you'll find a friend in Condensation. It's got the funk of Idles and the raspy, shouty, vocal style of Sean Murphy O'Neill of Liverpool rockers Courting.
Vocalist Alex Rice has an interesting baritone voice, and it was not what I was expecting, as someone previously unfamiliar with their discography. Nonetheless, it makes for a more compelling listen, grasping your attention and stretching it to the extreme.
Sure, Sports Team have made a name for themselves in the indie scene for their experimentalism, but the addition of whistling on Planned Obsolescence was misplaced and slightly irritating.
The fan favourite of the singles Bang Bang Bang is, as the name would suggest, western-cowboy inspired. Which, at first, is the type of cliché you would typically roll your eyes at, but here... it works? It's undeniably well done, kudos, Sports Team.
All in all, Boys These Days makes for a decent third album from Sports Team and is worth checking out if and only if you're into the sort of music described here. If not, then your attention would be better placed elsewhere.
Find all Sports Team information here.
