Review: Sports Team at The Wardrobe, Leeds

06/12/2024

Heather Gosling reviews Sports Team at The Wardrobe, Leeds

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Image by Bartek Szmigulski

By Heather Gosling

Sports Team have been playing gigs since they met each other in Cambridge, and they are always energetic, rowdy and incredibly fun (this gig was no exception). After my interview with Sports Team a few weeks ago, I was excited to attend their sold out show at The Wardrobe. The band are used to playing much bigger venues than this, but the intimacy of The Wardrobe meant that the crowd felt even more electric. It’s been two years since their last UK tour, but now the boys are back in town.

First on stage was Mary In The  Junkyard, a London-based experimental rock trio who have recently released their debut single ‘Tuesday’. Whilst the band has a softer sound compared to Sports Team, they were the perfect support band and got the crowd going. The band is composed of guitarist and vocalist Clari Freeman-Taylor, bassist and viola player Saya Barbaglia and drummer David Addison. During the set, lead singer Clari expressed the band’s sadness that their tour with Sports Team was coming to an end, but thanked the band for letting them join the tour. The crowd were captivated by their set, especially Clari and Saya’s fine-tuned harmonies and the use of the viola during the set added another layer to their sound. After the recent release of their debut EP This Old House, Mary In The  Junkyard are certainly a band to watch.

Alex Rice entered the stage to a roar from the crowd of loyal Sports Team supporters. The band opened with ‘Camel Crew’, a classic from their debut EP Deep Down Happy. This was followed by ‘Game’ and ‘The Drop’  from the band’s Mercury Prize nominated album Gulp!. Mosh-pitting was continuous throughout the set, and the crowd felt like a community that had come together through a shared love of Sports Team. The band’s new single ‘I’m in Love (Subaru)’ was played, which is a different sound to the band’s previous albums and includes a saxophone, ‘80s synths and the band’s harmonising vocals. Sports Team’s album Boys These Days is set to be released in February 2025, but the band teased an unreleased song ‘Bang, Bang, Bang’ which received a brilliant response from the crowd.

Halfway through the set, Alex told the crowd that when they played at a previous show they were briefed about what to do if a human pyramid emerged in the crowd, and the crowd followed suit to make that happen. ‘M5’ is my favourite Sports Team song, and the energy in the crowd during this song could have powered multiple cities and solved the climate crisis. The band came back on for an encore after chants from the crowd to play ‘Here’s The Thing’ and ‘Stanton’.

After their set had finished, Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’ played and everyone in the crowd put their arms around each other and sang together, a moment of true community after an evening of crowd surfing, mosh-pitting and screaming Sports Team songs. Sports Team’s music really lends itself to being played live, and the band’s stage presence along with their legion of loyal fans made for a brilliant evening.