Sports Team have shared new single ‘Medium Machine’ from a forthcoming deluxe edition of ‘Boys These Days’. Listen below.
The wistful, country-tinged track is one of seven new songs that will appear on the forthcoming expanded record, which is due for release on November 5 via Distiller Records/Bright Antenna (pre-order/pre-save here).
“I read somewhere that [Stephen] Malkmus started Pavement trying to sound like The Fall. To me, ‘Medium Machine’ is what it would have sounded like if he’d wanted to be Men At Work,” explained lyricist and guitarist Rob Knaggs.
Also featuring elements of slacker rock from the ’90s, ‘Medium Machine’ includes the lines: “But I don’t care if you love me/ I don’t care if you tell me you love me/ I don’t care if you want me to love you.”
We then hear a distorted solo over a swirling instrumental that takes us to the single’s outro. The song is accompanied by a bizarre, Kris Rimmer-directed video. It depicts the band members performing as teenagers in their bedrooms, while dipping into some dreamlike scenes. Watch here:
Speaking about the seven new tracks on the deluxe album, including upcoming single ‘Pet Sounds’, Knaggs continued: “These songs were written at the same time as the ‘Boys These Days’ demos, but fell in between two piles. We had the electro-clash material, that was piling up in the ‘maybes’ pile, and the Prefab Sprout-influenced tracks.
“‘Living In Skin’ and ‘In America’ were in the electro-clash heap. They were written in January 2023. I think I had probably heard The Dare’s ‘Girls’ and was having flashbacks to ‘Youth Speed Trouble Cigarettes’-era Kitsune compilations. I don’t think we really had it in us for a full album of electroclash, but this is the vestigial appendix of that.
He added: “‘Germany’ and ‘Dog Country’ we just ran out of time for. At some point the working title for the album was ‘Dog Country’. I thought it was a good stand-in for suburbia. When we got to Norway to record, though, it didn’t feel so urgent, and by the time we were finishing up the mixes, it had been benched.
“‘Shoegazr’ is sort of in between the two. I don’t think anyone ever thought it really fit into either potential album. Ben played guitar on it which is a one off. We were going for a Drop Nineteens thing, but I think listening now, it maybe sounds more like Miike Snow.”
The tracklist for Sports Team’s ‘Boys These Days (Deluxe)’ is:
1. ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’
2. ‘Boys These Days’
3. ‘Moving Together’
4. ‘Condensation’
5. ‘Sensible’
6. ‘Planned Obsolescence’
7. ‘Bang Bang Bang’
8. ‘Head To Space’
9. ‘Bonnie’
10. ‘Maybe When We’re 30’
11. ‘Medium Machine’
12. ‘Pet Sounds’
13. ‘Living In Skin’ (demo)
14. ‘Shoegazr’ (demo)
15. ‘In America’ (demo)
16. ‘Dog Country’ (demo)
17. ‘Germany’ (demo)
Sports Team released the original edition of ‘Boys These Days’ – their third studio album – in May. NME gave the record a four-star review, writing: “Sports Team flip the narrative of an increasingly stark, divided world to embrace the childlike side of human nature, staying true to that foundational principle of the band.
“Sonically, it’s a step up from the guitar-driven mayhem that characterised their roots, without just slapping some synths on top like many of their indie counterparts. In reality, they’ve never sounded closer to that wacky, eccentric live band down your local on a Friday night – and maybe that’s where their truest form lies.”
Meanwhile, Sports Team are set to head out on a UK headline tour next month. Find any remaining tickets here, and see the full schedule below.
Sports Team’s 2025 UK headline tour dates are:
NOVEMBER
5 – Manchester Academy, Manchester
6 – The Art School, Glasgow
7 – O2 Institute, Birmingham
8 – Leeds University Stylus, Leeds
12 – Patterns, Brighton
13 – The Waterfront, Norwich
14 – Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth
15 – Electric Brixton, London
Sports Team recently cancelled some of their European dates, citing financial issues. “Touring as a six-piece band is an extremely stupid business model,” they explained. “Normally we’re able to make things work, this time we couldn’t justify the financial risk.”
