Sports Team on their upcoming album: “The first record we’ve made that doesn’t sound like six idiots”
Ahead of a UK tour this month and the release of their third album Boys These Days in February, Ruby Smith caught up with Sports Team’s Alex Rice (vocals) and Rob Knaggs (lyrics, backing vocals, rhythm guitar) to discuss new music, offending people at their record label, and the hottest curry in Leeds.
Like their music, Alex Rice and Rob Knaggs are equal parts funny, honest, and sincere. They speak to me on a sunny October afternoon after a comical meeting with their label: “Every campaign you have a word with your press and radio people and someone will always suggest you do a gig on the Thames, and that finally happened again today. You have to talk people down from that being an entertaining idea. Rob I think offended someone at our label; he said ‘Ah that sounds like something Circa Waves would do’ and the guy was like ‘I think I worked on that campaign!’”.
It is no surprise that gigs play a significant role in the campaign for the band’s upcoming album. Live performance is a cornerstone of Sport Team’s identity; they are reputed as one of the most exhilarating and raucous acts in the UK. The Mercury-nominated six-piece indie rock group blend punchy guitar riffs and catchy melodies with witty, observational lyrics that offer sharp commentary on the absurdity of everyday life. Their shows are a celebration of the chaos of being young in Britain.
The raw energy of Sports Team gigs is captured in the group’s latest single, ‘Condensation’ – a lively track stacked with swaggering riffs and infectious excitement. Alex explains the importance of concerts to the band’s sound: “It is too much pressure to just rely on the music… When we first started playing there was always a sort of terror at not entirely knowing what to do with yourself when you’re on stage and it comes out as that sort of frantic energy you get. When we were getting into music as kids, the gigs were the bits we remembered. Going into London for a night with your mates and seeing these people we thought were heroes actually playing 500 cap rooms in London being like, ‘wow that was the greatest night of my life’. So I think when you see a bit of yourself in the crowd you’re playing to that’s always incredible. And it just feels more tangible as well; a lot of music now can get very about the streams report or radio report and stuff like that and if you do a press interview on Zoom or whatever it is, but it’s the live bit that feels very real.”
In contrast to the pulsating physicality of ‘Condensation’, the previous single is a shimmering, glossy tune that oozes sophistication. ‘I’m in Love (Subaru)’ glistens with the romanticisation of a Subaru Impreza, while a cynical dissatisfaction lurks behind the new car dream. Sonically, the polished and poppy elements mark a turn for the band.
While smouldering saxophone is a new feature, the glamorisation of mundanity is not. Whether singing about the M5, Wetherspoons, or Aldershot Municipal Gardens, Sports Team have always aimed to be the talisman for “Clarkson-core suburbs in middle England”. Alex explains, “We grew up in suburbs in boring towns in England and I think the whole kind of The Strokes style music that we grew up listening to was designed to make that feel like the least cool thing in the world”. Sports Team strive to “give value back to the way a lot of people live”.
Even as their career grows and they play to larger crowds across the world, nothing about the band’s outlook has changed. Their music has, according to Alex, “always come from a place of quite specific experience, and I think that’s where more where music is going now. People want to hear about the specific: they want to hear a specific roundabout reference, they want to hear a specific bar reference. I think those are the songs we love as well – when you create a mythology around the stuff that exists in your very particular life.”
He compares it to country music: “All that’s really doing is taking very prosaic stuff and making it everything. It is saying that tiny thing that happened in your life is important. I think that’s where our music has stayed – mythologising little things.”
Rob has a “vision of some kid sat in their room in America thinking about Aldershot and thinking ‘oh I wish I could visit there one day’. The glamour of that place.”
America to Aldershot is a lengthy pilgrimage, Aldershot to Leeds less so. The band feel very connected to this city: “I really like the Brudenell and we’ve played Live at Leeds loads of times.” Rob enthuses. “Al [Greenwood] our drummer is from there so it’s a city I feel like we know really well and enjoy coming back to”. Lucky for him, Sports Team return to Leeds on the 23rd November to play a sold out show at The Wardrobe.
The last time the band performed in Leeds was memorable not only for the gig but also for the antics beforehand. Rob reminisces: “We got a little bit over excited in some of the pubs and were drinking quite a lot, so we had to eat something to get ourselves ready for the show. So we went to this restaurant and had what was claiming to be the hottest curry in Leeds… The chef came out at the end and shook our hands, crying, unbelievably red, everyone in the restaurant on their feet clapping. It was beautiful.” “Yeah we got a certificate for it!” Alex adds.
Spicy curries are not a habitual pre-gig tendency for the group, but when asked about post-gig rituals Alex confesses the first thing they do after coming off stage is always the same: microanalyse. “Talk every bit down, try and get hold of a desk mix, and analyse mistakes. Our bassist Oli [Dewdney] gets quite adamant, it is funny to say to him something like ‘You missed the third root note in the second track’ and just make it up and he will spend the rest of his week fixating on getting hold of a desk mix to prove that untrue.”
Harsh critique is not only done to mess with mates, but is a genuine part of the band’s rehearsal method. Rob explains “we have a process we like to call a witch hunt. When something is sounding bad you go round in a circle and everyone has to play what they were playing really slowly while everyone else stands there and critiques it, which is quite horrible actually.”
Clearly, Sports Team do not shy away from intense processes to produce results. Their upcoming album, Boys These Days, was created in Norway with producer Matthias Tellez (previous work includes Girl in Red and CMAT). Rob describes how the process differed from their other records: “we’re using the studio more as an instrument in its own right. Rather than doing 50 different guitar pedals to get a certain guitar tone there’s a bit more freedom to play around with different sounds and not necessarily have everything live in the room.” Their earlier music “had this super Pavement-y kind of slacker-y sound… you would go to the studio after 7pm with 2 cases of beer and by the time you’d finished them the song would be done. And it sort of sounds like that – there’s a kind of ramshackle element to it… On our first records we always sort of thought of ourselves as these polymaths, you know like we were the modern day reincarnations of Steely Dan or whatever. I think this is maybe the first record we’ve made that doesn’t sound like six idiots with guitars and drums and stuff in a room.”
On the other hand, “in some senses the process was kind of similar … It’s always just about trying to enjoy yourself. When you go into a studio for a month, you just want to be having fun and surprise yourself”.
As a result the album is “quite an insane mix of things”. Rob reveals that the songs range from “country western” to “very ACDC rock” to a tune in which “Riceys voice goes quite ethereal, it kind of sounds like Daughter”. Genre is dead. Sports Team are very much alive.
Words by Ruby Smith
