Whether or not you listen to Sports Team, if you frequent specific spaces on the internet, there’s a high likelihood you know the name. If not, then you’ll be familiar with their antics. Whether it’s printing fans’ tweets on t-shirts, buying a rickety van to drive up and down the country to promote their album, or feuding with numerous artists, Sports Team are practically inescapable. But online presence and assorted feuds aside, they’re determined to prove that being in a band – specifically being in a band as notorious as Sports Team – is really quite fun.
“Well, I suppose it was coming from a place when we were first in bands,” singer Alex Rice tells me. Sat next to bassist Oli Dewdney, the pair are on a sofa, taking a break from rehearsing for their upcoming shows and, indeed, from stirring up mayhem. “We were playing around South London. We were just getting started, and the whole way of conveying yourself was very aloof, in a way. It was very staged. It was all about how ‘cool’ or ‘introverted’ you could be. So the best way we thought about it was like, ‘Why do people pretend that being in a band is this weird, strange thing?’ and ‘This sort of strange, power dynamic with fans… isn’t this a fun thing?’”
“Most of the time, just bluntly, fans are kind of, like, better at making content than we are”
Oli Dewdney, Sports team
Rice continues: “Everyone has to do TikToks. So you can be upset about it and complain or you can do it your own way and try and make it fun. Why should you make being in a band look boring? It’s really fun.”
But it’s not just Sports Team – there seems to be an entire movement of artists focussed on making things fun. Whether it’s The Last Dinner Party or Chappell Roan, being cool and mysterious is out; theatricality is in. Complex concepts, elaborate costumes, and Performance (with a capital P) all currently take centre stage in the music scene. And although you won’t find Sports Team singing about Roman emperors (‘Caesar on a TV Screen’, The Last Dinner Party) or making crowds follow a dance routine while in drag (‘HOT TO GO!’, Chappell Roan) any time soon, they’re still very much part of the same movement. When they’re not reposting people’s posts mocking them, they’re asking fans to come to their shows dressed like Jeremy Clarkson. Otherwise, they’re announcing upcoming tours using the meme-ready Comic Sans or urging the people of TikTok to listen to their music: “If you like compulsory national service for all 18-year-olds, you will love Sports Team,” a recent post reads. The whole thing, of course, is entirely self-aware.
“It’s about putting everything on the table, you know, and kind of having it dripping in imagery and, yeah, just being a very proud maximalist. And I think that’s the kind of camp we’ve always sort of felt ourselves to be a part of,” elaborates Rice.
In a way, this maximalist aesthetic has grown with them until it’s reached its current form. “Most of the time, just bluntly, fans are kind of, like, better at making content than we are,” Dewdney explains. “And I think when you actually use stuff that’s made by fans, you get more of a sense of the way the world actually sees you. You don’t get to be whatever your dream portrayal of yourself is, where everyone thinks we’re handsome poets.”
“When you’re a kid, you can be very clear-minded about stuff”
Alex Rice, sports team
Handsome poets or not, Sports Team have come a long way since their formation. They first burst onto the scene in 2017 with their first single, ‘Stanton’, which sent ripples through the South London music scene – the same scene that has produced bands like Black Country, New Road, black midi, shame, and of course, The Last Dinner Party. By 2020, they had released their debut album, Deep Down Happy, which earned them a Mercury Prize nomination. The 2022 follow-up, Gulp!, also received widespread critical acclaim. But when albums one and two are out of the way, what does making album three – the not-yet-released Boys These Days – feel like?
“The pressure was off, in a nice way,” Dewdney asserts. “No one ever thinks their first album is going to do as well as it does. Then suddenly, that one kind of kicked off, so you’ve suddenly got fifty people dipping their toes in and wanting to, like, have their say in where the song is going. And [Boys These Days], I feel like we’ve sort of matured into it. We’ve got used to being in a studio, and we kind of know all the pressures that come with it.”
But while Deep Down Happy and Gulp! are filled with frantic indie rock, two singles in Boys These Days seems to be taking a different approach. Take the lead single ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’, a classy, jazz-infused indie pop track, where a narrator believes a red Subaru Impreza will transform their life. The rest of the album builds on this child-like view until it eventually becomes a snapshot self-portrait of the band.
All these new narratives come in, and everything becomes very conflicted, everything becomes politicised, everything gets questioned
Oli dewdney
“There’s stuff with hope, there’s stuff with disappointment, there’s stuff with longing and love. You know, there’s stuff with heartbreak. There’s always these different sides to it, so I think that’s what this album kind of gets across. It’s kind of like a cross reference for getting to the point we’re at in our lives,” Dewdney explains. Rice adds, “You’re dealing with a jungle of narratives that you have to deal with when you get to adulthood as well. When you’re a kid, you can be very clear-minded about stuff.”
Two singles in, it seems that Boys These Days will be equally ambitious and cutting as Deep Down Happy and Gulp! were. But while Deep Down Happy’s sharp, satirical lyrics captured the humour and frustration with so-called ‘middle-England’, Gulp! took a broader approach, critiquing everything from conspiracy theories (‘Kool Aid’) to late-stage capitalism (‘The Drop’). What Boys These Days holds, only time will tell.
“We’ve only released two songs [from Boys These Days],” Dewdney notes, “but you do kind of get that sense where it starts with a very idealised version of the world [on ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’] and then it kind of moves on. All these new narratives come in, and everything becomes very conflicted, everything becomes politicised, everything gets questioned.”
Online presence, lyrics, and music aside, Sports Team have also built quite a reputation for themselves through their live shows, with their power-packed discography soundtracking the rowdy chaos that fans have come to expect from their shows. But with ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ having – *gasp* – a saxophone, the real question is how well songs from Boys Thes Days will work when played in sweaty dark rooms all over the world.
“You feel something kick in. Something quite primal comes out”
Alex rice
“I think that’s what we’re working on at the moment. We wanted to come back with [‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’] first; that’s probably the most different,” Dewdney tells me. “You can get bored with making, whatever it is, like 160 BPM, drum, chorus, mosh, that sort of thing. So I think we’re excited about trying to perform it as well. Having a saxophonist has been really big in how to make us play different. You can’t rely on just loud thrashing anymore.” He adds: “I think it lets you have a set that’s got more dynamic in it so you can have quiet periods, and you can bring it back up again at different periods, too.”
These unruly live shows are the subject matter for their second single from Boys These Days, ‘Condensation’. Now, placidly sitting on a sofa on a Zoom call with me, it’s almost impossible to believe the two men on the call are the same ones that jump from balconies, crowd-surf, get told off by security, or, in drummer Al Greenwood’s case, getting their head cracked open by a cymbal, bleed everywhere, and continue to play while being treated with a first-aid kit (true story).
“You feel something kick in. Something quite primal comes out,” Rice explains as he tells me what it’s like to be on stage. “And I think it would be true of, like, 90% of people as well. More people than you’d think have probably got that kind of fight or flight instinct in them. If you go out in front of a crowd of 2000 people, you feel something kicks in, especially when you’ve got a group of five mates behind you. You’re confronting a group of people literally screaming at you. I don’t think any of us went into music being, like, born performers. You just kind of find it out when you get to that stage.”
So, with a UK tour ahead of them and having just announced a US tour, Sports Team are ready to hit the ground running, leaving a whirlwind of chaos behind them wherever they go. Boys These Days will shift slightly in its approach from Deep Down Happy and Gulp!, making it clear that an exciting new Sports Team era is upon us. And as pop embraces maximalism, there’s no better band to lead the charge than Sports Team. And hey, maybe along the way, they’ll be able to prove that being in a band is actually, really quite fun.
Boys These Days is out May 23, 2025 via Distiller Records and Bright Antenna.
Words: Sophie Flint Vázquez
Image: Bartek Szmigulski
TrueStyleMusic 