Neu Full house: Sports Team

It’s 7.30pm on a Tuesday night and we’re sat in the middle of a bingo hall being snarled at by an angry pensioner. It’s not just any bingo hall, mind. No, Cricklewood’s Beacons Bingo holds the lofty title of the UK’s largest venue for this sort of thing, and we’re here upon the specific request of Sports Team – a band who seem naturally drawn to semi-suburban curios like these, much to the irritation of the nearby gamblers desperately hissing at singer Alex Rice to shut up. “There are two things you can do if you come from the suburbs,” he’s theorising. “You can send something down and say it’s grim and boring, or you can, if not romanticise it, then talk about it and be interested and make it lyrical and beautiful. Maybe that’s the difference with the sound we’re making.”

Since meeting at Cambridge University, the band (completed by guitarist and songwriter Rob Naggs, drummer Al Greenwood, guitarist Henry Young, bassist Oli Dewdney and Ben Mac on, er, shaker) have always taken the road less travelled. Among a near-non-existent music scene consisting primarily of choral groups and covers bands, the group started writing their own off-kilter tales of suburban romance and putting on their own night – the excellently-titled Poundband. “For us, it’s always been about making the gig an event,” explains Alex. “We did a tombola, we’d trick the local Labour candidate into coming down and introducing us, there were all these ‘bits’ that we had to make people come.” Eventually, Sports Team became such an established anomaly around Cambridge that they were asked to play the uni’s prestigious May Balls. “We’d be sharing dressing rooms with Nero, Shura, and Loyle Carner - that was one of the line ups,” remembers the singer. “We played before Pendulum once…”

Moving to their shared house in Harlesden, the band upped their oddball live act to a series of ramshackle London shows – flamboyant and theatrical, with Alex in the centre of it all, prancing ‘round the stage like a young Jarvis, and Ben standing perfectly still, shaking a packet of Tic Tacs. “It was definitely born out of the fact that if you don’t have loads of songs then you’ve got to make a show,” says the frontman. “I just think it’s a higher art form than the actual songwriting, doing the performing bit. I think it’s quite lowbrow, the songwriting bit.”