![]() “Having just moved to London you’d think everyone that was involved in music was a Goldsmiths graduate – some kind of Gucci magician,” Rice says, meaning the hyped glam troupe HMLTD, who Rice describes as “one of the worst bands ever”. They are an endearing group, frequently bursting into laughter around the pub table, and weren’t always enamoured of their moodier London peers. ![]() It was quite stark for me that, when you come out, you’re really required to stop thinking to an enormous extent.” He says that a big part of the band is “to provide people with an alternative way to live their lives – we try to make it look joyful”. Rice agrees: “We really enjoyed Cambridge, going to lectures, thinking about things. A lot of friends are very successful, but very few of them say they are happy.”Īlex Rice of Sports Team. ![]() But there was a sense that there must be something more. We were so lucky – it’s amazing to have a job and live independently in London. “There was a sense of frustration at the social contract: you graduate, you get this job, and you’re supposed to feel fulfilled and happy,” says the drummer, Al Greenwood. These japes evaporated when they graduated and moved in together in London, doing jobs in everything from social care to social media. So to make their shows seem like “anything but a guitar music gig”, they invented Poundband, a club night with £1 entry that would feature sideshows such as their keyboardist, Ben Mack, doing, by his own admission, “freestyle rapping over eskibeats”. “Guitar music was not very cool,” Rice says. “He took his job seriously, but it was intense.” Musically, the band bonded over bands such as Pavement. “He would stand on this barrow, and say: ‘I’ve seen people burn to death!’” Knaggs says. One of their first songs, Stanton, was about the fire warden at their Cambridge college. “If you’re a kid from Tunbridge Wells and you’re going to Pitcher and Piano on a Thursday, where’s the music for you? You want something that romanticises the world around you and makes you feel better about it.” Knaggs’ heroes are John Betjeman, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan his songs, about fishing, Wetherspoons, flip phones and the M5, similarly find uplifting poetry in the everyday. ![]() “We had this experience of life being quite mundane,” says the frontman, Alex Rice, whose bandmates grew up in Cheshire, Kent and Leeds. ![]()
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