Home Read Albums Of The Week: Sports Team | Gulp!

Albums Of The Week: Sports Team | Gulp!

Smashing the sweet spot between indie-rock, alt-pop and contemporary pop, the British outfit's second album is every bit the firecracker its cover art would suggest.

THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Britain’s most exciting breakthrough band of recent years, Sports Team, have just released their second studio album Gulp!

The first taste of Gulp! came with the single R Entertainment. Signposting a bold and ambitious new era for the band, Sports Team explain that R Entertainment explores “the packaging down of all human experience into entertainment, prompted by the infinite scroll through social feeds and the manic formlessness of the images we are hit with every day. Graphic news interrupted by ads for season 17 of The Bodyguard, news as a rubbernecking, passively waiting for the next drop of horror as we flick through recipes.”

Sports Team are Alex Rice (lead vocals), Rob Knaggs (rhythm guitar), Henry Young (lead guitar), Oli Dewdney (bass), Al Greenwood (drums) and Ben Mack (keyboards / percussion). Formed in 2016, the band released two EPs — Winter Nets and Keep Walking! — before sharing their debut album Deep Down Happy in June 2020 to widespread critical acclaim.

Sports Team’s vivid vignettes of modern Britain and inspections of the follies, foibles and frustrations of youth have earned them an impassioned fanbase, a real community who come together at the band’s infamously electrifying live shows.”