Sun Room + Sports Team @ Le Belmont▪

I literally only found out about tonight’s show a few days ago. Confirming my review requests for October, I notice that one of my favourite new bands of the year, Sports Team, are playing… this coming Friday! A last-minute media request later, and here I am, arriving inside Le Belmont just as the band are arriving on stage (thanks, Montreal parking). It’s a little weird that they’re opening for a band on a smaller stage than the one they headlined back in April, but I’m all about the smaller stages, so I’m not complaining!

Not a lot has changed in their set in the 5 months since I last saw them, obviously, except for the fact that frontman Alex Rice has traded the Hoodie/Russian fur hat look for a muscle-flexing sleeveless tee. The predominantly young female crowd screams in delight once they hear the accent that accompanies that look! Their set is well received, with a lot of crowd-shuffling right off the bat with The Game, and the singalong for the chorus breakdown on Fishing is pretty loud too. Signature tunes The Drop and Here’s The Thing are greeted with huge cheers at their respective conclusions before the 35-minute set ends with a ferocious Stanton. Another great show for these guys in our city!

Sports Team Setlist

The Game
Here It Comes Again
Happy (God’s Own Country)
R Entertainment
Dig!
M5
Fishing
The Drop
Here’s the Thing
Stanton

No disrespect to tonight’s headliner, San Diego’s Sun Room, but I had honestly never heard of them until I learned about tonight’s show. The room is pretty packed and very noisy by the time they hit the stage at 9pm, and I kinda feel like I’m intruding in another world, being surrounded by such devout fans, devoted to a band I don’t know at all. But I am happy to go in with a blank slate and be won over!

And won over, I most certainly am. The set bounces between 2 completely opposite sounds during the course of the hour. On the one hand, their laid-back SoCal roots shine through on the Wavves-esque surfer vibes of Rumble / Just Yesterday, and Sunset Garage is the embodiment of 60s guitar pop. Sol Del Sur is the first song you will hear if you look them up on Spotify, and if there’s a more perfect lo-fi blissed-out summer song released in the last few years, I am yet to hear it. Expect to see it opening a Wes Anderson movie sometime soon.

On the other hand, it’s a veritable garage rock show. At Least I Tried is a Libertines-esque blunderbuss and brings a long-haired metalhead from the back to try and stir things up at the front. The teen girls don’t appreciate it much, but he perseveres, getting a couple of buddies to join him on Kaden’s Van. He actually asks frontman Luke Asgian if it’s OK to mosh; Luke reassures him, “yeah, I love it, as long as nobody gets hurt!” Moshing service is resumed for the duration, with Outta Their Minds and Road Runner especially raucous. Bassist Max Pinamonti’s ability to recite the alphabet backwards gets the biggest cheer of the night, though!

Luke expresses his gratitude towards the end of the set: “Thank you for such a sick show!” It’s a great introduction to the band, and whilst it’s my first time seeing them live, I hope it’s not my last!