Sports Team are looking to build something special with audiences on their current tour. It’s a human pyramid and if it reaches three levels high then the band’s resident living statue and keyboardist Ben Mack is promised to sing.
Security staff survey the room nervously as a space opens in the middle of the crowd and one by one, young punters assume their positions within the flesh and bone structure. Once successfully established, the mount receives a raucous reception from genuinely impressed onlookers, and Mack obliges with a few lines of kitsch pop.
Such participatory hijinks are becoming the norm for a new generation of live music fans who have come of age through all manner of austerity, arriving at young adulthood with utter contempt for nanny state Britain (if they thought of her at all) and an unquenchable thirst for fun. For the last decade or so popular music appeared to be getting dumber – that is to say, lyrically simpler and more repetitive, with diminished melodicity – but the recent uptick in entertainment value and audience interaction with grassroots live acts like CMAT, The Last Dinner Party and Yard Act, just for example, is indicative of a shift in the artist-audience dynamics that have been dramatically transforming the music industry since the turn of the 2020s. And there’s finally a renewed appetite for middle class guitar bands but without the requisite for skinny jeans – YES!!
Two equally unguarded DIY acts in Welly and Mary In The Junkyard open proceedings in the Warehouse venue at Glasgow’s SWG3, exhibiting the type of fuck-it-all hunger and defiant nonchalance that great and memorable support bands have. Welly are engaging, chatty, friendly and super endearing to the point that they cannot be ignored by even the most cynical of barflies, while the trio of Mary… are self-contained in their not-quite-shoegaze dream pop. Each offers something different from the other and neither steps on the toes of their headliner.
In anticipation of their forthcoming third album “Boys These Days”, Sports Team are keen to whet the appetites of fans who have been patiently waiting for new music since 2022. Without giving too much away they garnish an effervescent set with delicious morsels of what’s to come next February; two singles in “I’m In Love (Subaru)” and “Condensation” already hinted at synth-laden grooves and this is backed up by the wistful “Maybe When We’re Thirty”. Their natural progression from post-punk to new wave will be worth the wait. Not that they’ve abandoned the charm of their earlier material; the encore wraps up with the forcefully enchanting singalong duo of “Here’s The Thing” and “Stanton”. Nothing too silly or saccharine, perhaps neither and maybe both. The tone is ambivalent.
Although there’s nothing revolutionary about Sports Team’s music, there’s a refreshing relatability to their suburban social commentary, at least if you’ve not been too distracted by global headlines to see what’s happening in your own backyard. Their observations are funny and true in ways that don’t feel malicious or overtly politicised, and there’s an honest wittiness in the simplicity of their delivery. The six-piece’s energetic charisma draws listeners to them, whether through streaming or ticket sales, and where they meet there’s a kind of mutual agitation, a frivolousness that precipitates crowd-surfing, human pyramids and other frowned-upon shenanigans. But it seems there’s also an understanding that this is harmless excitement, fun for fun’s sake, nothing more than ridiculous joy. Proof that you can have serious fun without being explicitly serious.
Words and pictures: Kendall Wilson @softcrowdclassic