Just who are the real Sports Team? We pop along to this record store gig to get more of a sense. May 27th 5pm.

We were in London for Jasmine.4.t, but made a detour to catch a Sports Team matinee at Rough Trade East. Part of the reason was I couldn’t decide just how seriously or not they took themselves. Or how much of a comedy act they want to be. This appearance sort of answered some questions. The band came on to Meatloaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’. Again, not really helping with the serious band or piss take angle. What does confirm things is when Alex Rice comes slowly on in an old-fashioned suit and holding onto a Zimmer frame type walker. He is wearing full-on latex prosthetics and a thinned out white-haired wig. He looks a little bit like a geriatric older brother of Albert Einstein. He keeps the pretence of not being himself going for all of about 30 seconds. There is no mistaking who it was once he started singing, if you hadn’t already guessed.

This is a band who clearly want their audience to laugh. That want to be considered ironic. The lines blur in a lot of places. Whilst they aren’t likely to go full Goldie Lookin Chain on us, the love of 80s power ballads in a bunch of Cambridge University graduates does have a slight whiff of Brett Easton Ellis and Patrick Bateman about it. Don’t ever go to the dark side guys.

We have since discovered the dress up was for the music video of ‘Boys These Days.’ which features some footage from the Rough Trade gig.

In the 45-minute set, all the singles from the new album ‘Boys These Days’ got a workout. ‘Bang Bang Bang’ is still epically great. Watching the late teens and early twenties leaping about to ‘Subaru’ still doesn’t help me understand if they are doing so ironically or unironically. There are no winks from the band either. This isn’t The Divine Comedy, but then it isn’t a played straight Deacon Blue or Prefab Sprout either.

The tracks from the new album sound great, it is a higher and more consistent quality than their previous albums. There is room for ‘The Drop,’ ‘Camel Crew,’ ‘M5’ and ‘Here’s the Thing’ which stand up well. They end on ‘Maybe When We’re Thirty’ which has some truly brilliant lyrics. It feels a bit short at 45 minutes, but perfectly acceptable for a Record Store gig. On the basis of this there should be an excellent atmosphere for their headline tour later in the year.

Sports Team: Boys These Days