Interview with Alex Rice of Sports Team

Standfirst: “…we love getting on a tour bus and going round the country and just sitting in a pub in Sheffield all day chatting to people about music. It’s honestly the greatest thing in the world.” After two years away, Sports Team are back with a string of live shows and a new album on the way.

Whilst it’s certainly been a busy time for Sports Team of late, I got the sense that all was calm in their camp, despite the sheer amount going on in their world. As well as gearing up for the release of their new album, ‘Boys These Days’, releasing 23 rd May 2025, the post-punk/ indie-disco six-piece are currently in the final stages of preparation for their UK autumn tour.

A few weeks ago, I caught up with lead singer, Alex Rice, who was positively beaming at me from the other end of the laptop screen. He’d just found out that the rest of the band were going to be late for rehearsals because their van (carrying all the instruments) had broken down somewhere outside of Dartford. But Alex was unperturbed by this hiccup and chose to hang around outside the rehearsal studio
for his bandmates- less rock and roll, more sitting on a rock and waiting patiently. Alex would later tell me that there was a more relaxed feeling in the studio when making the new album, ‘Boys These Days’, than 2022’s ‘Gulp!’ and, as we spoke, Alex continued to exude the same level of chilled.

Sports Team have teed up the release of ‘Boys These Days’ nicely, with the release of ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ and ‘Condensation’. These two tracks differ substantially in terms of both tonality and style. However, both represent a more fleshed-out approach, with a real focus on sound dynamics.

Speaking about ‘Subaru’, which has a lavish, velvety, saxophone running through its core, Alex explained, “Well, I think it was the first time we felt able to do stuff like that, I guess. For this one we were with more of a kind of pop producer I guess- Matthias Tellez- who’s done Girl In Red, CMAT and stuff. He’s a real kind of studio guy.”


“It was a crazy vocal experience where you don’t worry about hitting any of the notes- just give it as much energy as you possibly can, which you know, for me who can’t hit notes at the best of times- he was just like, ‘ give it energy and I’ll put the notes in right places’, and that was kind of the attitude he had for everyone’s part.”

“And then once you’ve got all that basic stuff all the other bits become very easy. I think you can sit there, and you can be like ‘oh right we got 3 more weeks, what are we going to add?’, kind of thing. And so, I guess that sort of studio process where we felt like we had time, space and the ability to play around a bit more led to that song. But that’s probably the one that’s most different on the album, I guess.”

Speaking more broadly about the album, he said, “The album in general is kind of like this pilgrimage from very idealistic and naïve sort of start with ‘Subaru’, where it’s a childlike love for a car, to [the end] where you get a lot more competing narratives come in and sort of how you negotiate that as someone going through your life.” As well as being more well-rounded in terms of style, ‘Condensation’ has a deranged swagger to it with lyrics such as, ‘Unzip my skin/ I watch the whole world crawling in.’

Rhythm guitarist Robert Knaggs said simply recently, ‘It’s about sweat.’ It was written during a time when the band were taking a break from live shows, which ended up lasting two years, and it’s an homage to those compact sweaty shows. Alex was audibly energised when talking about just how eager the band are to get out there and start playing to an audience again.

“Yeah, I mean like so excited it’s been so long, it’s probably the only bit we enjoy, and I really mean that. It’s the only bit that kind of feels tangible. You get sent streaming figures or album presale figures everyday by your manager and it’s just kind of like they’re numbers on a spreadsheet.”

“Until you’ve actually got people in front of you that are singing it back- and you get to meet people afterwards, as well, which is the best bit. And we love getting on a tour bus and going round the country and just sitting in a pub in Sheffield all day chatting to people about music. It’s honestly the greatest thing in the world.”

‘Boys These Days’ was recorded in Bergen, Norway, where the band lived for a month whilst working on the album. Surrounded by snowcapped mountains, Alex and Rob spent their evenings hiking in the dark and discovering underground bunkers from World War II and the Cold War. I heard in Alex’s voice just how fondly he remembered the band’s time there and it sounded like that physical exploration was a freedom that seemed to benefit Sports Team’s overall creative process. A few moments earlier, he mentioned a renewed sense of trust from new label, Distiller Records, which is partly how Sports Team ended up in Norway and also how Rob and Ben Mack (synths, piano and percussion) ended up directing the music, video for ‘Condensation’.

“Directing feels grand. But throughout our careers, every time labels would give us budgets for a video, we’re all just like, ‘Well we’re make it!’ and then spending 900M quid on cooking wine that goes into a bath and stuff like that- we’ve always wanted a label to let us do that. So, we said we’d really focus on this and say we’d do it again. The final track on the album is called, Maybe When We’re Thirty, and, on name alone, is likely to resonate with so many fans and continue resonating with the band themselves as well.

“We’re all basically 30 now and the chorus goes: ‘Maybe when we’re thirty we can all get a job. Once a year we’ll go out and watch The War On Drugs’. So that one is quite a nice bookend to being able to play Subaru and then come through to this slightly more jaded outlook. But also, one that’s almost got a lot of kind of conceding to the world, I think. It’s a bit quieter as well so it’s nice when you can have those moments where you can just sit on the side of the stage and actually sing one, rather than scream for an hour and a half.”

The album, ‘Boys These Days’ will feature a title track that explores a nostalgia mindset and will play with themes of masculinity. But the album promises to retain a certain level of romanticism, much like previous highly played Sports Team entries. “In the past we’ve kind of phrased it to romanticise middle England but it’s more just romanticising I think very prosaic bits of life and saying these things still have
meaning and there are things you can create a whole universe and lore around. So, I think it’s still got all of that but hopefully the music has come on a little bit.”

Sports Team will kick off their first of ten UK tour dates at the New Century in Manchester on 14th November and finish at O2 Forum Kentish Town, London on 25 th November.

14/11/2024- Manchester, New Century
15/11/2024- Birmingham, The Castle & Falcon
16/11/2024- Liverpool, Arts Club
18/11/2024- Sheffield, Foundry
19/11/2024- Glasgow, SWG3
20/11/2024- Newcastle Upon Tyne, Boiler Shop
22/11/2024- Nottingham, Rescue Rooms
23/11/2024- Leeds, The Wardrobe
24/11/2024- Bristol, The Trinity Centre
25/11/2024- London, O2 Forum Kentish Town
Sports Team’s new album, ‘Boys These Days’, will be released 23 rd May 2025.

Interview by Charva Writes Stuff for The Songbird HQ