Sports Team burst onto the upper region of the U.K. album chart in 2020 with Deep Down Happy, a debut packed with hyper-catchy, (circa late-'70s) punk-styled indie rock anthems full of cheek and swagger. Two years later, the likewise hook-fueled follow-up,
Gulp!, finds the lads more discouraged and anxious but no less irreverent. To that point, the album opens with a long squeal of feedback and galloping guitars and bass on "The Game," which sets the economic scene with "Runnin' home/Past the empty office space/In the half-filled business park..." before later stressing "That's the game/Life's hard but I can't complain." They delve into a darker, driving post-punk on "The Drop," a track whose deadpan baritone backing vocals counterbalance lead singer Alex Rice's ever-exasperated rasp. There, they lament society's tendency to work us 'til death ("So wash your hands of all these childish plans and let 'em die"). Elsewhere, "Unstuck" dips a toe into rockabilly for further working-class regrets ("So I was sleepin' when you got up/And you were sleepin' when I got in"), and they adopt a countrified power pop for the unabashedly fatalistic "Getting Better," which makes an anthem of "It's only getting better/'Til it starts off getting worse."
Sports Team return to an angular punk, this time with a Middle Eastern flair, on "Kool Aid" ("I watch my future drying like it's paint"). While lyrically bleak,
Gulp! delivers its pessimism with fist-pumping enthusiasm for the most part, at least until the meditative,
Kinks-evoking closer "Light Industry" emphasizes life's repetition on the album's one true outlier, like a final wink and a nod. ~ Marcy Donelson