‘On stage, fight or f light is triggered’
With their brilliant debut album, Deep Down Happy, Sports Team have shown they are fit and ready for the top division. They went straight in at number two in the UK’s Vinyl Charts only to be pipped for the top slot after a second-week surge in sales for Lady Gaga’s Chromatica album. Deep Down Happy did, however, get a five out of five review from the Irish Mail on Sunday which, of course, is way more important.
‘Thank you very much. That is very, very kind,’ lead singer Alex Rice says with a laugh.
‘We’ve been shocked by how well it has done. It speaks to us in an old-school way about bands. A community of fans has built up around us. It is very special for them, as well as us, that a bunch of outsiders like us can storm into the charts because that community went out and bought the record.’
Sports Team are in a tradition of socially aware bands with a sardonic take on British life, from the Kinks to Blur and Pulp.
The sextet met while studying at Cambridge University. The band has slogged around the toilet venues of Britain over the last three and a half years, building up a reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting live bands in the process.
Rice is the not-so-secret weapon. He struts, prances and marches, on big stages and small, like a strange hybrid of Mick Jagger and Jarvis Cocker.
‘I have an almost visceral reaction when I get out on stage,’ the 24-year-old says.
‘It’s quite confrontational in a way. It triggers that fight or flight instinct. The audience are expending all this energy and you feel like you’ve got to give it more than they give you. We always try to stick around after every gig and meet people properly. Some fans come on the whole tour. It’s like a travelling circus.
‘Music is where there is that sense of community now. We know that Fontaines DC and The Murder Capital have that in Ireland and we want to get over on the next tour,’ he says.
After we spoke, it was confirmed that Sports Team would play Dublin’s Grand Social venue in April of next year. But, speaking of Fontaines DC, Sports Team did appear to have a pop at Ireland’s indie band of the moment in an interview with a British newspaper last year, something Rice says that he now regrets.
‘We regret that interview we did in The Guardian. It was the first interview we did with a proper journalist. We came across as such p **** s. It made us sound like a bunch of idiots,’ he says.
‘But we’ve hung out with Fontaines DC backstage at festivals and all that where everyone was having a laugh. Everyone was so happy. Then, they’d go out on stage and out would come the cigarettes and they’re staring out to the back. And, you’re thinking, “where does that come from?”. We’ve always been conscious of that, pretending to be something we’re not, on stage.’
There is a contrast in the approach and attitude in two of the most exciting bands to emerge on these islands in the past few years but it’s highly unlikely hostilities will develop. Sports Team, Rice says, are concentrated on their own agenda.
‘There is a perception that we are quite middle class, but genuinely we come from a mix of backgrounds,’ he says.
Songs such as The Races, Here’s The Thing and Lander speak not of a class war but one against apathy, indifference and acceptance of a status quo in Britain where the division of constituents with similar concerns suits a ruling elite.
‘In the song The Races, for example, I sing about one of these pro-Brexit pub bores that are everywhere in the kind of places that we grew up,’ he says.
‘If you listen to our lyrics, they will tell you what we think and that we want to be on the right side of stuff. We’ve been out on the Black Lives Matter protests and we have always been about bringing people together, regardless of class or where you’re from.
‘It’s all about educating yourself a bit better every day about what’s going on around you,’ he says.
Deep Down Happy is available now. The band is scheduled to play in The Grand Social, Dublin, on April 20, 2021
‘Some fans come on the whole tour – it’s like a travelling circus’’