Sports Team review, Deep Down Happy: Full of charm and unpredictability

Singer Alex Rice plays the eccentric circus ringmaster, conducting the careening rhythms, skittering drums and his own, hyperactive delivery

Having a ball: Sports Team hurtle between pithy social commentary and youthful abandonment (Rachael Wright)

Releasing an album during lockdown must be a strange experience for any artist – more so for those with as solid a live reputation as Sports Team. Fortunately, the Cambridge-formed six-piece have poured all of that zest into their debut, Deep Down Happy.

Propelled largely by guitarist and songwriter Rob Knaggs’ complex compositions, the record nods to good old-fashioned indie but also contemporary post-punk, hurtling between pithy social commentary and youthful abandonment. “I bought a tie, and I bought a suit,” despairs frontman Alex Rice on “Here It Comes Again”, about the daily 9-5 grind. “They saw right through me.”

They seem content to poke fun themselves as much as anyone, but occasionally their gaze lands on their poseur peers. Single “Camel Crew” breaks contemporary “be nice” conventions and take aim at bands who favour fashion over the music itself: “This avant-garde is still the same/ Go to Goldsmiths and they dye their fringes/ Just to know they’ve made it only/ When they sign the rights to Sony.”

Rice plays the eccentric circus ringmaster, conducting the careening rhythms, skittering drums and his own, hyperactive delivery. Yes, there are moments when their sound threatens to stir up the ghosts of indie landfill past – his staccato “ah ah ahs” and “la la la” drawls on “The Races”, for instance – but ultimately the charm and unpredictability of their vignettes see them through. As far as “guitar music” is concerned, it’s game on.