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Sports Team return to bat with third chapter projecting the best of British follies.

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A band thriving on the chaos of live music in the UK, Sports Team have been a telling backdrop to the absurdities of a modern and messy Britain. A boisterous vocalist of Alex Rice interloped with a sprawling bass of good old-fashioned guitar music from the likes of rhythm Rob Knaggs and lead Henry Young, the band feed themselves on both a wavering line of affection and disdain. Their Mercury-nominated debut Deep Down Happy delivered in terms of bold and brash anthems of anguish – all the while trying to laugh through it. The follow-up of Gulp! a mere two years later leaped more into the existential idiocy with life all being one big board game, one wrong move away from it all going up in smoke.

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Now this year sees the band sees their flavour of choice at its most seasoned yet. Boys These Days is quite perhaps the bands’ most earnest to date – all the while keeping that off-kilter bite we’ve grown accustomed and loved. They’ve grown up a tad – but not by much.

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The brassy-heavy swoon of I’m in Love (Subaru) is a fun introduction to the bands’ boundless levels of sardonic wit, perhaps implying that buying a luxurious sports car may solve all life’s problems. Elsewhere, the title tracks’ is a seedier attempt to poke fun at today’s youth and their lack of tenacity to get back up again after a fall. Elsewhere, sax-laden Moving Together – which has tropes of the Corrie title sequence – questions that the kind of love told in print and film, perhaps isn’t the real thing by any stretch.

While they’re always eager to get their witty points across, they’re still cautious enough not to miss on those gluttonous anthems. A rip-roaring sensation not too dissimilar to Blur‘s canon, Condensation and Sensible chart easy listening. Elsewhere, Western-inspired Bang Bang Bang – perhaps a follow-up to Fingers (Taken Off) is a galloping might that sees the band look further afield for their sounds. Head to Space is an jaunty and rambunctious blow-out not too dissonant to a water gun fight in the garden or burning bins in the city centre.

The album concludes with a fitting monologue in Maybe When We’re 30 of getting old in Middle Britain, disliking the neighbours, whisking off on Cruises and sleeping in separate beds.

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Marking the rambunctious start to British Summer and our live festival sphere, Sports Team and Boys These Days is an appalled fascination to todays’ times, harnessed with true good ol’ fashioned Brit wit. If it’s our soundscape of choice however, we shouldn’t have too much of a problem getting through it.