Sports Team

About Event

Sports Team’s third album ‘Boys These Days’ cements their place at the heart of a great English songwriterly tradition, while marking a huge leap forward in the band’s sonic trajectory. Taking influence from the eccentric English maximalism of Roxy Music, World Party, Prefab Sprout and XTC, it’s a bold record that fully realises the promise of the Mercury Prize nominated six-piece.

While the band’s first two albums Deep Down Happy (2020) and Gulp! (2022) – both of which debuted in the Top 3 of the UK’s official charts – were recorded in the gaps between a punishing tour schedule, ‘Boys These Days’ was the product of two years of studio work, allowing the band to fully realise their ambitions.

The album pulses with a hedonistic anxiety. “Not playing live was like two years in a convent” says vocalist Alex Rice, explaining live shows become “a high you can’t get anywhere else.”

Having gone from London’s backroom pub scene to the 5000-capacity Brixton Academy in less than 12 months, Sports Team built a reputation as one of the country’s best live acts. It’s no surprise that 20 months on from their last British show, Rice missed that chaotic communion with their fans.

Throughout the album vocalist Alex Rice tilts at the windmills of modern living. From the adolescent dream-fulfilment of a shining red Subaru Impreza, to the greed of a nation of landlords; the album’s lyrical themes are a baggage carousel of the sins of 21st century life, washed clean in the blood of David Beckham. From dog-whistle “proper binmen-ism,” to Chianti, remote fucking and Fred Again, it’s a love letter to a life blown apart by nothing-much-in-particular.

The album deals with the vacant symbols of 21st life. “Where love is a tax-write off, and the moon is just a great big strip-mine in the sky,” Knaggs explains. It’s a soundtrack for “the age of obsolescence. The promise of a shiny new life, with the breakdown already built into it.”

Despite its themes, the album never feels dour. Packing its punches with the effortlessly sticky melodies of guitarists Henry Young and Knaggs, Ben Mack’s bar-room piano, and the one-two punch of drummer and bassist Al Greenwood and Oli Dewdney, the hooks are relentless.

The band spent January 2024 in near total darkness in the home of Death Metal, Bergen, Norway, with producer Matthias Tellez (Girl in Red, CMAT,) emerging with their brightest record to date. It marks the beginning of a new era for the band who, after releasing their first two albums with Island Records, have signed with Distiller Records (they remain with Bright Antenna in the US).

Sports Team are: Alex Rice (Vocals) Robert Knaggs (Lyrics, backing vocals, Rhythm Guitar) Henry Young (Lead Guitar, Lap Steel) Oli Dewdney (Bass) Al Greenwood (Drums) Ben Mack (Synth, Piano & Percussion)

Brògeal

The rambunctious Celtic folk of The Pogues, the story-telling charm of The View, the lush pop harmonies of Teenage Fanclub, the jangly delicacy of the Smiths, the yearning of a classic Oasis B-side and a Scottish brogue as defiant as the Proclaimers… Brògeal have it all – and make it their own. A bubbling cultural cauldron set to boiling point, the sound overflows with accordion, banjo, bouzouki, mandolin and perky penny whistle, where ancient folk tradition meets an indie Gen Z sensibility and laughs, sings and dances in the face of 21st century darkness. The death of the swaggering good-time band has been greatly exaggerated.

From small-town Falkirk in central Scotland the folk-punk-indie-pop five-piece have big ideas, with a reputation as one of the best live bands in Britain, their communal, sing-along, delirious anthems igniting mosh-pit madness throughout the UK, Ireland and beyond. Everybody loves them.

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