How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working class in favour of the privileged, a bunch of snarky ex-Cambridge University students who make smug guitar pop, a Brideshead Revisited version of The Kooks. And yet, and yet, that’s too trite, too obvious; they mine their background and image with self-awareness, their songs smart, ironic observations of the world they’re perceived to inhabit. They’re gunning for Roxy Music’s elegant trick of rendering monied louche wryly cool. On their third album, they succeed around a third of the time.
The opening song, “I’m in Love (Subaru)” sums up the issue. It’s horrific, sax-laden soft-rock that makes The Feeling sound like IDLES. It’s unlistenably unpleasant, but the lyrics are an opaque, anemoiac meditation on Nineties Hollywood materialism, the sort Pet Shop Boys deliver so well. Happily, it’s the album’s lowest point.
Musical comparisons along the way would include Prefab Sprout, “Come On Eileen”-era Dexys (especially on the ultra-cheery hoedown “Head to Space”) and The Waterboys, as well as other band’s aforementioned (Pet Shop Boys aside!). Such implied resemblances bely the fact that the production sometimes goes to ear-intriguing places. A highlight is “Bonnie” a solid song that’s a little like late period Specials on a dub mission. More typical of Boys These Days is “Condensation”, which comes on like Primal Scream’s “Rocks” via the prism of a bar band from Henley.
The final number, “Maybe When We’re Thirty”, is a slow, crafted and bitterly sardonic excoriation of Brit middle class complacency. It’s a great idea, well rendered. Check the lyrics: “Well, maybe we could buy a house/And we could have a kid/And spend our days on Facebook/Such happy days on Facebook/And share Daily Mail stories about David Beckham’s kids/With pithy little insults/Such pissy little insults”.
But, then, just when I was coming round to their charms, I saw their latest publicity shot (pictured left). There’s just no excuse.
Facetiousness aside, the songs on Boys These Days contain too much of whatever that photograph is going for.
Below: Watch the video for "Condensation" by Sports Team
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