The boys are back in town; certainly, as Sports Team takes to the stage to the iconic party song, blackout shades on some, towels draped over the heads of others. This tour being Sports Team’s first UK tour in two years, the event is apt and the energy is high. Plastic Students Union beer cups are launched and a sea of bobbing heads swells to a maelstrom of raised fists.
Sports Team’s music is funky, shouty, and maybe tongue-in-cheek. With twinkly, atonal keyboard jangles and walking bass, it’s road trip blues with references to London rather than Vegas, like a Midwestern Blur. There’s a lyric about a packet of crisps that everyone shouts, and the vocalist whips his towel from his shoulders to reveal a blue and grey suit befitting a Scientology recruiter.
Meanwhile, the keyboardist looks like a bene gesserit from Dune.
“You gotta start a mosh pit for this one,” the vocalist shouts as they stop a song halfway through its intro, and I feel like I’m watching a party from the sound desk, or an in-joke from the outside. There’s some rambling about Fontaines DC and a marriage proposal that I’m not party to dye to a muffled microphone.
Sport’s Team’s vocalist goes “through the motions,” introducing a new song and their merch. “We’re going to play a quiet song,” he says, and the band proceeds to play a song with identical shout-funk dynamics to everything before it. At its name, the crowd cheers. “Yeah, I know, boring stuff. Sit down. I’ll sit down for this one.”
At some point, the vocalist leaves the stage for one of the guitarists to sing a track. At another, the Smoke On the Water riff is played. These moments happen in casual sequence, and Club Academy’s mix of alternative guitar fiends and lads’ lads seem partial. I guess that’s good enough for me.
