Sports Team - Boys These Days

Hand-break off, Sports Team are back. With musical pedals to the metal and saxophones at full throttle, the Mercury-nominated six-piece bring us their third studio album, Boys These Days. After their first two, top three records – the Mercury Prize-nominated Deep Down Happy (2020) and Gulp! (2022).

The band ally a seer-like lyrical insight with their most dynamic musical performances to date, Sports Team are piercing the content abyss. A “carousel of 21st-century sins”, this witty and insightful examination of modern life is both a critique and a celebration of its times. Yes, ‘Boys These Days’ takes aim at everything from advertising hype to relationship dysfunction, stationed at the point where the digital tide crashes onto IRL shores, but their perspective is fuelled by immersion in that landscape as Sports Team are scrolling along with the rest of us.

Though recorded in Bergen, the birthplace of black metal, the sessions at the start of 2024 saw Sports Team create their brightest and most beguiling record yet.