Make no mistake, Sports Team are a 21st-century British alternative rock band, just as Wikipedia says they are. However, the music on their new album, Boys These Days, makes it clear that the six members of Sports Team must collectively own an impressive CD collection of the best and brightest Britpop bands from 1985 through 1995, along with a healthy selection of bands from earlier eras. That’s not a bad thing: Sports Team are a smart group that incorporate bits and pieces of past music they love into their modern sound and dryly funny lyrical point of view.
For example, take the opening track “I’m in Love (Subaru)”. As the song fades in, we’re greeted with a blaring sax playing over a track that otherwise approximates the ethereal pop sound of post-Steve McQueen/Two Wheels Good Prefab Sprout, with lyrics to match: “Feels like driving a throne / Immaculate leather and chrome,” croons lead vocalist Alexander Rice, who is soon noting that “Bill [Clinton, presumably] doesn’t blow his saxophone / On daytime shows anymore.”
While many of these influences might appear obvious—Prefab Sprout, Blur, Pulp, the Kinks—some music hat tips feel a bit more obscure. I’m thinking particularly of “Bang Bang Bang”, a wry commentary on American gun culture that recalls spaghetti western soundtrack music, but perhaps recalls the Jack Rubies, whose 1990 album See the Money in My Smile is a bit of a cult favorite.
The title track is a classic “these kids today” that uses that tired old “when I was your age” line to humorous effect: “When I was your age, we didn’t have marijuana, we just had working at a job every day.” It’s the classic generational struggle, though at this point, is it boomers versus Gen Xers? Millennials versus Zoomers? I can no longer keep track, but the struggle persists. In any event, with its breezy, cinematic feel, “Boys These Days” is one of the highlights of its namesake record.
Many of the songs on Boys These Days deal with 20-somethings confronted with the idea of settling down into domestic bliss or boredom. “You’re all so sensible / You’re all so sensible / You’re all so sensibly numb,” intones Rice, who also screams, “You know Chablis was incredible, the Chablis was incredible” in “Sensible”. Rice continues this theme in “Planned Obsolescence”: “I am another pointless device / Awaiting planned obsolescence,” he warbles over a jaunty tune, complete with whistling.
The closing tune, “Maybe When We’re 30”, brings the theme home as the narrator recites a litany of the things he and his partner can do once they hit 30 and submit to a dull English suburban life. “Maybe when we are 30, baby, we can get a dog / And once a year we’ll go out and we’ll watch the War on Drugs,” sings Rice, before speculating what they’ll be doing as further decades ensue.
A moody ballad that builds in intensity until it reaches an instrumental coda, “Maybe When We’re 30” is the perfect counterpoint to the opening track “I’m in Love (Subaru)”. As musical bookends, “I’m in Love (Subaru)” and “Maybe When We’re 30” give Boys These Days the feel of a concept album, telling a story of navigating one’s way through their 20s in the 21st century. On the other hand, Boys These Days could just be a fun collection of witty pop-rock tunes that sound current while employing clever retro sounds. Either way, Boys These Days is a blast.