Album Review: Boys These Days by Sports Team

Their third album is a bold left turn that swaps mosh pits for moonlit drives, leaning into maximalism with a shrug and a wink Cambridge-formed Sports Team have been doing things their own way since the start. Whether launching their 2020 debut Deep Down Happy with a gig at their local pub that ended in A&E, or trundling across the UK in a battered van to promote 2022's Gulp! the band have always preferred authenticity over convention. But Boys These Days marks a bold left turn, even by their standards.

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Expect the unexpected, as post-punk pranksters Sports Team return with their third record, Boys These Days, and it's their most strange and subversive offering yet. Drawing heavily from '80s New Wave, blue-eyed soul, and classic art pop, the former Mercury Prize nominees kick off with "I’m In Love (Subaru). " The lead single is a wry pisstake of macho commodity fetishism which could easily be a lost Spandau Ballet deep-cut, as Alex Rice croons over cheesy sexy saxophone.

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Make no mistake, Sports Team are a 21st-century British alternative rock band, just as Wikipedia says they are. However, the music on their new album, Boys These Days, makes it clear that the six members of Sports Team must collectively own an impressive CD collection of the best and brightest Britpop bands from 1985 through 1995, along with a healthy selection of bands from earlier eras. That’s not a bad thing: Sports Team are a smart group that incorporate bits and pieces of past music they love into their modern sound and dryly funny lyrical point of view.

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A band built on chaos, Sports Team have always known how to throw a party with a point. Their third album, 'Boys These Days', finds them once again skewering the absurdities of modern British life atop a backdrop of good old-fashioned guitar music. Never ones to take themselves too seriously, the band's sardonic wit is as sharp as ever. "When I was your age we didn't even have doors, we just had playing in the traffic with rocks," sings Alex Rice on the title track, poking fun at weaponised nostalgia.

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