Atmosphere, more than anything a band can do, makes a gig. Being handed a free Heineken as you watch the crowd try and fail to make a human pyramid is, truly, an experience you can only get with Sports Team. Gig etiquette is improving; the camaraderie and spirit the band has washes over the in-form crowd at Leeds’ Stylus venue. That’s just as important as the tightly tuned alternative rock on stage. What a wonderful presentation. Ten years in and the band has found not just a sound that works for them but an audience eager to hear more. That’s all it takes, really. Their gig in the bowels of the Leeds University Union is a thrill, and what makes it such a delight is that Sports Team’s material is starting to come into its own. That comes not through repeat listens but through hearing it on stage, the little intricacies the band can add to these songs that are ironed out in the master tape edit give their best tracks a whole new life.
Early setlist pieces like Bang Bang Bang and The Game are a thrill. Sports Team makes no attempt to dress up their stage presence. A cool WordArt background, a call for a human pyramid halfway through the set, and the conviction that comes through strong material written with the shortcomings of the world around us in mind. Boys These Days did brilliantly in its warnings of cultural decline and those same messages are found in this performance. I’m in Love (Subaru) is a nicely placed mid-set track and crucial to Sports Team’s show is finding that tempo. You can’t have the crowd exhausted four songs in, throwing themselves around again and again. But that bouncing energy looked wonderful. If the war wounds of a Yard Act gig were not still at play then it’d have been right into the thick of it. But to look on is just as interesting as being there for it.
Sports Team is one of the most thrilling live acts around right now. Songs like Camel Crew have a viciousness to their lyrics not lost at the Stylus gig, but certainly not the main aim of a thrilling evening. The same goes for Maybe When We’re Thirty, a song that warns of the inevitabilities of age and what little we can do to stop it. All that as Microsoft Flight Simulator is on a screen behind the band, whose abilities on stage are as tremendous as their latest album would suggest. Alex Rice is a magnificent frontman whose double denim boldness is matched only by his on-stage presence. That energetic suddenness, the flailing and borderline shadow boxing, is an appropriate movement to make when heading up songs like Medium Machine and Stations of the Cross.
Sports Team cements themselves as a must-see live act with this performance. Their Stylus show is a flawless showcase of their abilities as a band. Both Kissing People and Formal Speedwear are exceptional openers, too. Both bands are absolutely necessary listening, ones to keep an eye on over the coming months. Big things on the horizon for both, or at least we can hope so. Sports Team is backed well by those two groups in a charming set. Rare form this is, but what a pleasure it is to see unfold. Tight instrumentals, a strong vocal run through a truly delightful set, and a moment where the crowd gets on the floor and rows themselves along to the beat of Sports Team’s greatest songs. A surreal and memorable gig, not just because of the band, either.
