At long last, after some anticipation-building delays, Cambridge-based six-piece Sports Team have released their second album, ‘Gulp!’.
Upon first listening, I found myself skipping back to their debut EP ‘Winter Nets’ just to double check that it was the same infamous voice of frontman Alex Rice spearheading the tracks. Since the release of that iconic middle-English soundtrack in 2018, the band and its
members have grown a lot (if only the same could be said about their fans). Their endless
touring travels on the motorways of the UK, from city to city and, more recently, across the
pond to New York, has seen their style become increasingly distant from the themes of their past.
Where ‘Winter Nets’, ‘Keep Walking’, and even ‘Deep Down Happy’ represent the angst of
being a young person in a small English town, ‘Gulp!’ instead illustrates the band’s explosion out of their village life, local band cocoon. Sports Team make their many influences even clearer in this LP, with a wide variety of sounds spanning multiple eras of rock.
In the build-up to the release of ‘R Entertainment’, frontman Alex Rice tweeted that the band are entering their ‘U2 Vertigo phase’, exemplified perfectly by tracks like ‘The Drop’ and ‘Kool Aid’. This stands in stark contrast, however, with the very bouncy, American country sounding ‘Unstuck’, which has more in common with Dolly Parton than with Bono. It’s testament to the band’s expert coordination and character that through these dramatic shifts, they retain the essence of what makes them Sports Team. They blend their Post-Punk Lite style into each genre they cover, keeping their tracks distinctly moshable.
That is not to say that all of the album’s tracks are intense and guitar heavy. ‘Getting Better’ is a loving homage to the likes of Elvis Costello and Van Morrison, exploring the difficult relationship young bands have with ideas of ageing and being in their prime. Then there’s the gorgeous, flowing ballad of ‘Cool It Kid’, in which we see Rice display his vocal prowess. Guitarist Rob Knaggs describes the track as “probably the most positive song on the record in a way, saying, ‘When it feels like things are getting worse, sometimes just don’t answer, bite your tongue for a little bit and don’t have a huge go at your bandmate because they’ve taken up your half of the fridge shelf.”
Speaking of Rob, there is no way this review could avoid talking about his moment in the
spotlight on ‘Light Industry’. Whereas other tracks on the album feel almost as though they
were recorded on a festival stage, full of energy and manic crowd surfing, ‘Light Industry’
feels more like it was recorded in a living room surrounded by your best mates. It leaves the album on an intimate note, letting the listener know that they really have just met Sports Team, and heard all their stories from the past four years.
Rating: 8/10
