Sports Team - Live at The Thekla, Bristol
Sports Team are currently inhabiting that sweet-spot for a new band.
All the tracks so far have been met with a positive response, they’ve been on the road most of the year so have perfected their current live show, and in doing so built up a dedicated following. They’re accessible enough to capture a younger, statistically-likely-more-appreciative audience, and young enough themselves to look wonderful (the bastards). You can hear the swoons as singer Alex Rice takes to the stage.
They are also direct and honest, and not ashamed to use Robbie Williams’ ‘Let Me Entertain You’ for their entrance to the stage before opener ‘Margate’, in all its glam-rock-with-Television-lead-guitar glory, bursts into life and whips the already highly-charged crowd into orgasm. Right from the off Rice gives it his all, heartily beating his chest and swinging his arms back and forth to demand undivided attention in what, as becomes apparent throughout the gig, is his trademark fashion. ‘Margate’ is swiftly followed by ‘Camel Craw’, which has another crowd-pleasing trick in breaking down and then coming right back.
Rice has all the classic tricks of a frontman with, if you’ll (please) forgive the phrase, moves like Jagger, and bearing a resemblance to him too. Strikingly good looking (even in a white suit), he teases the crowd by dangling his mic stand (adorned with flowers) over the top of the crowd. He hugs every stage-diver (one young man in particular must have jumped on stage about five times), and as he himself declares in the lyrics to ‘Fishing’, this young man is a lover, not a fighter.
Rice is nearly outdone by keyboardist Ben Mac though; Bez in attire and Chris Lowe in attitude, he stands stock still by his instrument for virtually the whole set, on occasion perhaps boring himself and strolling back and forth, seemingly unaware that he’s in a band. It’s incongruous when compared to Rice but fascinating nonetheless. He in fact stands apart from the whole band, all of whom are committed to the cause, albeit with no sense of uniformity in their dress code.
The songs themselves pack a punch (“We’re just going to kill it for 35 minutes”) and utilise the smart trick of finishing suddenly to gain maximum applause. ‘M5’ is reminiscent of the more party-driven songs of The Dandy Warhols, ‘Fishing’ is becoming a youth anthem (‘we go out with our friends’) and new single ‘The Races’ sounds like a diatribe to the gammons but is still delivered in their joyful way.
The frantic, muscular ‘Here It Comes Again’ is their calling card, and while the set veers into being one-note, ‘Ski-Lifts’ does add a whiff of melancholy to their pop oeuvre. Which is just as well because life can’t be one big party, though Sports Team are damn well trying to make it one.