Sports Team - Boys These Days

Sports Team have always thrived in the chaos, but with 'Boys These Days', they finally weaponise it. Still feral, still funny, still skewering the modern condition like they're comment-section Socrates, the band's third album takes their well-worn hallmarks - British absurdism, tongue-in-cheek snark, festival-ready hooks - and supercharges them into something bolder, weirder and way more self-aware.

'I'm In Love (Subaru)' sets the tone: part love song, part existential meme, part Top Gear fever dream. A crooning sax solo, a perfect fake sincerity, a gleaming Subaru at the centre of it all - it's Sports Team doing what they do best: sounding joyous while tearing into late capitalism with a wink and a breakdown. It's all very smooth, very silly and very clever.

That same magic trick runs through the entire record. 'Bang Bang Bang' takes a detour through America's obsession with guns via spaghetti Western guitars and yelping chaos. It's equal parts rodeo and reckoning, a surreal outsider's take that somehow morphs into one of the best choruses they've ever written. What started as satire now carries real weight, thanks to the band's own brush with violence last year, but it still barrels forward with unshakable swagger.

Elsewhere, 'Sensible' might be the closest they've come to a straight-up Britpop banger, and it's a killer one. All pulsing energy and perfectly over-it lyrics, it rips into the wellness cult of self-optimisation with an eye-roll and a side of Fred Again digs. "Go to the gym. Get ripped! Get rich! Get ahead!" Alex Rice shouts before casually dismantling the modern yuppie. It's got the bark of early Blur with the bite of something a lot more now, and a chorus you'll be humming in your sleep.

But buried in the smirk is a surprising amount of heart. 'Maybe When We're 30' trades the chaos for something softer, and it hits hard. All wide-eyed resignation and slow-build catharsis, it's a song about growing up, sort of, but also about realising you might just want a dog and a neighbour you mildly resent. It's funny, sure, but it's also strangely moving. Sports Team have always been good at jokes - this is proof they can do feelings too.

'Moving Together' leans into that same melancholic mode, turning a half-hearted relationship into a synth-washed slow dance. 'Condensation' swings the pendulum right back with one of the album's most immediate highs - bright, punchy, a little sweaty. The title-track, 'Boys These Days', feels like the whole album in miniature: part satire, part anthem, part unfiltered scream into the void.

This is Sports Team at their most ambitious, not in some boring, grown-up, conceptual sense, but in the way they stretch their sound to match their ideas. Horns blare. Synths shimmer. Everything feels dialled up without tipping into parody. There's still plenty of shouting and plenty of strut, but it's been polished with just enough polish to keep things surprising.

'Boys These Days' is a messy, brilliant, shouty little time capsule of what it feels like to be young, online and half-sure you're screwing everything up. It's smart without being smug, fun without being throwaway, and completely, unmistakably them. This might be the most Sports Team they've ever sounded, and somehow, it's also the best.