Alfie Templeman is gifted musician, producer and songwriter who, at only 21, can only be described as a bonafide polymath. Almost entirely self-taught as a producer and musician (playing eleven instruments) and with over 300,000,000 streams worldwide and touring sold-out dates across UK, Europe, Japan, Australia & USA, Alfie has released a string of EPs, debut album “Mellow Moon” and just announced his second album “Radiosoul”.

Hand-break off, Sports Team are back. With musical pedals to the metal and saxophones at full throttle, a river of halogen glows golden and an incisive critique of latter-day capitalism burns through the haze as the six-piece’s new single ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ glides into view.

A song not only born to float out of car stereos, but one to question the mass-produced, brand-obsessed cultures that create them.

Carpooling with the likes of Trust-era Elvis Costello, city-pop icon Mariya Takeuchi and Bryan Ferry shimmering with all his Roxy Music sophistication, ‘I’m In Love (Subaru)’ merges thematic lanes with Prefab Sprout’s ‘Cars And Girls’, to deliver an updated exploration of cynical sting lurking behind the new car dream, though with a power steering assuredness Sports Team embrace the musical spirit of ‘the road’.

“The mood of the first verse and the chorus is quite sincere, a Hollywood-inspired, teenage love song,” explains guitarist and lyricist Rob Knaggs, “but by the time we get to the second verse, we’ve found the worm in the middle of that apple. All the symbols of teenage rebellion, the car itself, have all been co-opted into selling something that can’t actually be bought. It’s that classic, Freudian-drenched symbol of a middle-aged bloke in a sports car, wearing his racing gloves as he goes through a crisis. A real corporate, capitalised view of masculinity that is divorced from reality or what might genuinely be cool.”

The last time you heard The Big Moon was welcoming the release of their dazzling second album, Walking Like We Do, back in January 2020, when life was very different. That was a coming of age record, with bold songs for Saturday nights and sad songs for Sunday mornings. So much has changed and continues to change. And in this world of constant change, we yearn for something familiar. Thankfully, we can continue to rely on the unique, jubilant, unassailable bond that sews this brilliant London band together.

Like so many records landing in store and on streaming services right now, their forthcoming record Here Is Everything was conceived during the weight and worry of lockdown in a pandemic. Lives became seismically different, whilst every day a carbon copy of the last. So, whilst Covid pulled the duvet tightly up over our heads, it was also the unlikely backdrop to welcoming new life. Vocalist Juliette Jackson might have started lockdown teaching fans how to play guitar on Zoom to help pay the rent, but she ended it as mother to a super little human being.

Here is Everything documents the arrival of that baby in real time, and the simultaneous arrival of a new mother, full of excitement and fear. Meanwhile, the rest of the band doubled-down in the studio, taking Jules’ embryonic song frameworks and stepping forward as one, revelling in an innate, giddy togetherness and with a clutch of genuinely fantastic tunes.