Sports Team – Condensation Review

No wonder they are in love with their Subaru, look at this painting. Gorgeous, hand-crafted works like that often house the next steps of a genre or some divine experience. English Teacher and Yard Act turned to artists of similar influential stature and turned their album covers into moving pieces; art splashed across the place with a purpose. It is a lost release style set to be revived by the sharp minds of the bubbling alternate music scene. Sports Team too has joined the fold and with their smash new track Condensation, all is well in the sub-genre of painted cover art and quality music. Their third album is on the way, Sports Team has found their footing and so we hear the moves and grooves of a new wave. Condensation and I’m In Love (Subaru) are a wonderful pairing.  

Punchy guitar work and a warm style to its layered instrumentals elsewhere give Condensation a floating, joyous chance. Intimacy is not enough and the invitation from Sports Team to unzip them, to step inside their mind and see it directly from their point of view is a frightful experience. Yet it is built with the same art rock which moulded the best of Geese. It works for Sports Team too. It does not show on the surface of what sounds like cool and inspired rock, but frontman Alex Rice swerves into darker territory with his lyrical context. Ease the pain by going under, rip off your skin and feel the world with the constant irritants he appears to hold. Door-slamming, finger-cutting pain of an almost eternal variety is charged with the floaty instrumentals to bury those fears. 

Slick and punchy percussion opens Condensation and it is what lingers on the mind once it is over. A Cambridge-spawned band with a country twang to their instrumental style, and it feels bolder here. Pair it with praise for their single cover throne, the mighty Subaru, with its gorgeous saxophone and well-placed backing vocals, and Sports Team has a tremendously unique flavour to their style. It pulls from this influence or that sound, but ultimately is moulded into something spectacular by the band. Freedom of the open road never sounded so good, and considering the risk there is in naming or writing of cars (Bill Wyman and Queen has set this particular niche back by decades), it is frankly warming to hear Sports Team pull through with a solid dedication to motoring.  

For those who cannot drive or no longer feel, let Sports Team be the inductor of emotions. Condensation and I’m In Love (Subaru) pair well. The fundamentals of their sound are all in the right spots, the emotive clarity and the link to out-there fascinations with vehicles or ripping your skin off in the hope it convinces another of your worldview are paramount to the instrumental variety heard in these songs. Sharp stuff from Sports Team, and the road to third album Boys These Days opens up. No slip, no other traffic, just the band, their listeners and the embrace found in the warmth of a Subaru. Should Sports Team follow this road further, their creative clarity and opportune, exciting lyrical style will only grow.  

Sports Team is on tour in the UK from November 14, with remaining tickets available here.