Sports Team’s Orchestrated Chaos Returns to Glasgow
By Ben Bagley
“All I ever want to see in the world is complete chaos. I love it when things fall apart,” declares Sports Team’s frontman and figurehead Alex Rice. We are chatting in the lounge area of the band’s tour bus.
After a two-year hiatus, the London-based indie outfit announced their return with a string of UK dates and new single ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’, a ballad to the spoilered teen-mobile. Tonight sees them take to the stage at SWG3 in Glasgow’s glamorous West End.
“We're playing much smaller venues than last time,” Rice confesses. “I’m leaning into it. It’s great that you can hear the voices in the audience, chat to the crowd and make it quite personal.”
The six-piece, who met whilst studying at Cambridge, made a name for themselves through their raucous brand of guitar music and unique live shows. The release of their debut album Deep Down Happy was accompanied by a set at their local South London pub.
“We’re a bit more jaded now and have all just turned thirty,” says Alex, still just about young enough to pull off the sunglasses indoor look. “The stuff we’re satirising is a bit more fizzy North London pubs, small plates, natural wines, listening to Fred Again.. kind of thing.”
Friends of the band, Welly, have been brought along as support for this leg of the tour. They grace the stage fifteen minutes after doors to a mostly empty room. Lead singer Elliot Hall’s baggy Adidas tracksuit and mockney accent reflect the band’s sound which harks back to the 90s. The set is refreshingly energetic and seasoned with some effortlessly witty suburban-themed stage patter.
Art-rock’s Mary In the Junkyard follow suit. Their array of crafted ballads is a welcome respite from the evening’s lad rock dominated bill. It’s clear why the three-piece are tipped for big things by many a music mag.
Sports Team bound onto stage to the sound of ‘Sabotage’ by the Beastie Boys to a room less full than they might have wished for even on a sub-zero Tuesday night. The crowd is rather subdued for opener ‘The Game’, perhaps still entranced by the previous support act. My friend and I enjoyed a Chicken Tikka Masala from Kelvingrove’s Mother India (what a curry-house that is, by the way) before the set and feel, as a result, in no place to bounce.
Rice (I’m talking Alex not pilau) opts for the stick rather than the carrot in an attempt to rile up the masses. “Is this an arts school crowd or something? You should be moshing up the front.” The crowd seemingly full of arts students seem aggrieved by his critique.
Despite the somewhat frosty reception, Rice’s dressing down is effective and the audience is a-bouncing for fan favourite ‘Camel Crew’. In fact, the younger members of the crowd don’t look back from their Sir Alex Ferguson-esque hairdryer treatment and the room quickly becomes a sweaty mess.
The band’s rhythm guitarist and songwriter Rob Knaggs steps up to the musical oche mid-set, belting out a rendition of debut album opener ‘Lander’. “You’ve been waiting for a while / Down there by the Aldershot municipal gardens,” he bellows. Sports Team may be the only band in the world to mention Aldershot in two separate songs. I, for one, applaud that kind of Partridgean middle-English reference.
Seemingly unperturbed by the venue’s presumed safety measures, Rice encourages members of the crowd to form a ‘human pyramid’. For the uninitiated this involves four members of the crowd getting on all fours before three pile on top of them and so on and so forth. Following a brief architectural consultation in the pits, a rickety edifice is constructed in the middle of the dancefloor. King Tut himself would be proud of the effort.
The hour of sweaty tomfoolery comes to a close with ‘Stanton’, an ode to the humble flip screen motorola. Rice enters the crowd making a beeline for the mosh pit. It’s a bad night to be in the venue insurance industry. The security guards look concerned.
The vocalist is hoisted aloft by three burly gentlemen somewhere in the midst of Rice’s self-orchestrated bedlam and surfs around the low-ceilinged room on a sea of bodies. To the personnel at the front, this must have looked something like a Caravaggio; a Jesus-like figure floating above his baying disciples. It is, as Liam Gallagher might put it, “biblical”.
The long-awaited return of Sports Team isn’t a disappointment. They are back and still delivering a unique kind of ‘complete chaos’ which makes them an unmissable live act.