Sports Team (O2 Forum Kentish Town, 25/11/24) – Gig Review
26th November 2024Two years after we checked them out at the Roundhouse, rising alt-rockers Sports Team have returned to London, with a more polished, confident stride to their Middle England swagger.
After punchy opening sets from C Turtle and Mary in the Junkyard, the band strides onto the stage as extracts from Carmen blare from the speakers. It’s a bold move that proves a stark contrast to the catchy opener of ‘Camel Crew’. The throb of the mosh pit below us is immediately so intense that you’d be surprised to see you’re not at a metal gig, with fans throwing themselves forward to bouncy indie of ‘Happy (God’s Own Country)’ and ‘The Game’.
Frontman Alex Rice is equally energetic on stage, freely wandering from one end to the other and approaching the audience unburdened by an instrument. It’s a dramatic contrast to the hilariously bizarre energy of keyboardist Ben Mack, who stands stony-faced and still on the opposite side of the stage, decked out in full suit and tie and babooshka-esque headscarf. It’s a strange dynamic that gets even weirder when Rice attempts to get the crowd to form a human pyramid. An actual human pyramid, with many layers of people standing on the shoulders of many more layers of people, is hard enough to pull off in the most accommodating of conditions. These are not those, and needless to say it failed catastrophically.
The band has become much tighter in the last two years, and their sound is as big and crystal clear as ever. With seven people on stage most of the time, it’s impressive that they avoid the whole thing turning into a wash of distortion. ‘The Drop’ sounds particularly great, with that opening sax melody singing out above the clunky, off-kilter rhythm section.
One thing that doesn’t quite live up to the Roundhouse gig is the setlist. Their phenomenal 2022 album, Gulp!, is dramatically underrepresented, leading to weaker tracks like ‘Lander’ and ‘Winter Nets’ taking valuable real estate in the sub-90-minute show. Their as-yet-unreleased upcoming album, Boys These Days, is also showcased, with the strange sax-driven groove of ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ actually proving to be a highlight of the set, even if some of the unreleased material does lose the crowd a little at other points.
Unsurprisingly, ‘Cool It Kid’ and ‘M5’ are the night’s most impressive moments, with those evergreen melodies prompting a mass singalong that juxtaposes the unchanged deadpan expression from Mack as he provides the track’s chromatic synth accompaniment. ‘Here’s The Thing’ allows for even more surprisingly massive mosh pits to break out almost as soon as Rice emerges from the strange white cocoon he is for some reason now encased in. No further comment.
While I wasn’t as enraptured by Sports Team as I was back in 2022, they are still a force to be reckoned with as a live band.
Check out Boys These Days when it drops on February 25th, 2025.
