7pm doors | 7:30pm show | $17 Advance / $20 Day of Show + fees | 16+
—SPORTS TEAM— “Feels like driving a throne / Immaculate leather and chrome…”
Hand-break off, Sports Team are back. With musical pedals to the metal and saxophones at full throttle, a river of halogen glows golden and an incisive critique of latter-day capitalism burns through the haze as the six-piece’s new single ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ glides into view.
A song not only born to float out of car stereos, but one to question the mass-produced, brand-obsessed cultures that create them.
Carpooling with the likes of Trust-era Elvis Costello, city-pop icon Mariya Takeuchi and Bryan Ferry shimmering with all his Roxy Music sophistication, ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ merges thematic lanes with Prefab Sprout’s ‘Cars And Girls’, to deliver an updated exploration of cynical sting lurking behind the new car dream, though with a power steering assuredness Sports Team embrace the musical spirit of ‘the road’.
“The mood of the first verse and the chorus is quite sincere, a Hollywood-inspired, teenage love song,” explains guitarist and lyricist Rob Knaggs, “but by the time we get to the second verse, we’ve found the worm in the middle of that apple. All the symbols of teenage rebellion, the car itself, have all been co-opted into selling something that can’t actually be bought. It’s that classic, Freudian-drenched symbol of a middle-aged bloke in a sports car, wearing his racing gloves as he goes through a crisis. A real corporate, capitalised view of masculinity that is divorced from reality or what might genuinely be cool.”
With the pine air freshener unable to mask the whiff of unfulfillment around this consumerist vision, ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ artfully highlights the absurdity behind our era’s constant sales hype, evoking memories of Bill Clinton’s sax-playing escapades on primetime TV in 1992 as the then Arkansas governor tried to rally outsider cool behind his attempt to get the most mainstream job on the planet: the US presidency.
“The song is about the tension between those glossy inanimate objects you can project any desire onto versus all the stuff that creeps in behind it,” adds vocalist Alex Rice. “It should be a very uncomplicated love song, talking about cars and how people perceive their relationships, but with humanity, nothing is ever that simple.”
Though stung by the pervading cynicism, musically this love letter to the overwrought automotive icon that is the Subaru Impreza is truly devoted – and even ex-prez Bill would envy the luscious saxophones the band have added to accompany Rice as he seduces listeners with a rich croon.
While deconstructing a soft-focus culture that presents love as effortless as a Fast & Furious hand-break turn, ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ itself is locked into romantic cruise control as its horizon-capturing melodies reveal a dramatic shift of gears in Sports Team’s songwriting.
“Prefab Sprout was a big reference. The way they play with lots of 1950s studio effects that in other hands might be corny, but create something sincerely beautiful was inspiring,” says Knaggs. “There is humour to the lyrics but the music is not a bit, it feels very true to us. In the past, when we’ve made records we were conscious of being able to play it live straight away. This time we weren’t so hung up on that which was a big change, and that allowed elements like the saxophone and piano to come in.” It also brought some drama to Sports Team.
“Having been in London guitar world for a quite while, I began looking at people like Bryan Ferry and how it can be a bit more fun if you play around with characters,” says Rice. “He looks like he’s having a better time than a lot of the bands from our generation, and that’s what you want to be shooting for. The video we did with director Dora Paphides (The Last Dinner Party’s ‘My Lady Of Mercy’) really taps into that dramatic side too. It’s something that has always been there, but it felt right to really explore it around this song.”
‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ is the first engine rev from Sports Team’s third album ‘Boys These Days’. While its Top 3 predecessors, Deep Down Happy (2020) and Gulp! (2022), were recorded between bouts of intensive touring, the record not only follows the London-based band’s longest absence from a stage, but it was created via a series of near hermetically sealed sessions which saw the band decamp to Bergen, Norway, in January 2024.
Though the town is perhaps best known musically as the birthplace of black metal, the recordings with producer Matthias Tellez (Girl in Red, CMAT) have produced the Mercury Prize-nominated group’s brightest-sounding record so far.
“It was a slightly surreal working process,” says guitarist Henry Young of their time in Norway which followed on from an extended writing period at home. “I’m not sure if it’s a Scandinavian thing but the working day was 10 till 4 rather than late nights and all hours. So it was wildly different to what we’d done before.”
“I think it produced a better quality,” adds bass player Oli Dewdney of the distinctly un-satanic approach. “The quality of life was certainly better. And you can’t afford to go out drinking, which helps.”
Yet the enforced clean living hasn’t stopped Sports Team from getting their hands dirty, as revealed by the tension between the smouldering music and the grubby reality ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ chronicles. ‘Boys These Days’ will deal with yet more of these vacant symbols of 21st century life where, as Knaggs puts it, “love is a tax-write off, and the moon is just a great big strip-mine in the sky. This is the age of obsolescence. The promise of a shiny new life, with a breakdown already built in.”
Boasting some of the band’s most dynamic musical performances to date, alongside the seer-like lyrical insight, ‘Boys These Days’ is the perfect roadside recovery for the pitfalls of modern life, both on record or on stage, the latter being a place that Sports Team are very keen to return to now an autumn UK tour has been announced to precede the album’s release early in 2025.
“Not playing live was like two years in a convent” jokes Rice, eyeing his band’s touring schedule. “Being onstage is a high you can’t get anywhere else.”
Although getting behind the wheel of a classic Impreza with ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ locked on the stereo promises to be some trip too. It truly does feel “like driving a throne”…
Sports Team are Alex Rice (vocals), Robert Knaggs (lyrics, backing vocals, rhythm guitar), Henry Young (lead guitar, lap Steel), Oli Dewdney (bass), Al Greenwood (drums) and Ben Mack (synths, piano & percussion)
