Last year Sports Team released their successful debut album “Deep Down Happy". The singles released beforehand had already created a buzz in the indie/post punk scene, but to see their popularity rise enough to debut the album at the #2 spot on the UK album charts is amazing. Due to the pandemic the band was unable to tour the UK and Europe to promote the well-received album.

Looking at my record collection, I realise they are one of many bands to have joined the post punk revival wave. Between the start of 2020 and the upcoming summer, we should have been able to meet on grassy festival fields or charming venues, to celebrate albums such as: Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death, Shame – Drunk Tank Pink, Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg, IST IST – Architecture, Do Nothing – Glueland EP, Working Men’s Club – Working Men’s Club, The Murder Capital – When I Have Fears. Some of these bands play online gigs or press live sets on vinyl. Others silently wait out the pandemic. Luckily for us, some even release a new single.

That’s what brings us to the song of the week. Sports Team opened up a can of summer and gave us another weird, happy and slightly twitchy tune. The track is set to appear on a collection of b-sides and unreleased song ideas from the period up to and after Deep Down Happy. The project will be called “Plant Test” and will be pressed exclusively for independent record shops.

Lyrically speaking the band mocks a certain kind of conservative Englishness and the culture of cronyism that has been influential in British politics for some time. They created an amazing wicker man like video to illustrate and strengthen the message.

But it’s not meant as a heavy weighing song, more as a wink or a sly comment. The band describes the single as “a summer-of-hope-anthem” that “celebrates the easing of lockdown measures”. So drop this song in your spring/summer playlist and blast it in your garden next time you fire up the grill.