“Our plan is to simply release more music more frequently”

At the beginning of the year Sports They released their fifth album, the self-released self-titled album that made them appreciate how lucky they are to keep this great project among friends safe and sound.

(This November we will be able to see them in concert in Madrid and Barcelona. Check the exact dates of their performances at the end of this interview).

Christian Theriot and Cale Chronister, better known together as Sports, They are fully on a tour that, after passing through the United States, has taken them to places they had never visited. Starting from Oklahoma, they expand their borders and seek to make all of Europe dance with their most suitable album for the dance floor to date. We spoke with Cale and Christian, who connect from the other side of the Atlantic, about everything this release has meant and how it has affected the band’s present. “Going on tour and playing the songs live has helped us see the effect they have on the people who follow us, on the people who like our songs. To have a perspective of how the songs evolve over time since their release and with them the way in which we take them live,” explains Cale, playing with a toothpick, about this discourse that this new album is the result of a process of searching for the creative maturity that they have achieved through their previous albums. This fifth installment is the most “staff” to date of the duo. In it they laugh at the immaturity of the past, they play without a filter and, furthermore, for the first time they have been 100% in charge of the production of the album, under the tutelage of Chad Copelin (Sufjan Stevens, Avril Lavigne), throwing themselves fully into it and escaping any type of market pressures. “It was a lot of fun. We set up our own studio. Normally we go to another studio and have to reserve time. So doing it this way gave us the freedom to, in a way, come in and work on the songs whenever we wanted. Although, of course, in the end we had to set a deadline because otherwise we could have been working on the album for years just because we love making music. But yeah, it was great to have the freedom to explore and try new sounds,” Christian says.

“As an adult I want to be able to cry because it helps you process emotions, traumas and things like that.”

Sports They continue to have as their central base that dream-pop that characterizes them, which sometimes veers a little more towards psychedelic rock, but for this new stage they have wanted to expand the DNA of the duo a little towards a style closer to dance with songs like “Nice 2 Meet Myself” or “Jelly”. A decision that has inevitably also greatly affected the way they take their music to the new shows on the tour, planning a more electronic approach in the live shows. “Instead of the fans standing, you know, with their arms crossed staring at us. We’ve gotten them to be jumping, dancing, having a good time… And that’s fun to see from the stage.”. The album is clearly a liberation in every sense for its creators. Because, apart from enjoying the entire tour like children, they have also poured all their monsters and insecurities into it. A great example of this is “My Superstar”, a song in which they expose their most vulnerable side and the need to let go. “The idea was, as you say, to bring out the insecurities and how that can negatively affect the relationships you have. And, well, I even feel that I was trying to go deeper and become aware of the bad personal habits that I have and that are affecting everything around me. In the specific case of ‘My Superstar’ I felt that I needed help because I was stuck and I called my good friend Costa Upson. It had a few lines, the word ‘superstar’ and part of the lyrics of the verse. In the end we were left with a song completely inspired by ‘Romeo and Juliet’, which I think is in the public domain. I don’t know, I think all bands go through that if you’ve been in music long enough, in the end you end up writing a song inspired by that story and I felt like it was time.Cale explains about the album’s creative process.

This summer they released the performative and surreal video clip for “I Can’t Cry”, directed by Nikki Houston, in which they ended up peeling countless eggs and dancing endlessly to try to describe that feeling of wanting to cry but not being able to. “There are moments when something terrible happens, something that affects me a lot, I want to cry and I can’t. I have learned from a very young age to hold back tears when I felt like I needed to and as an adult I want to be able to cry because it helps you process emotions, traumas and things like that.”says Cale about the message behind the song. Aside from that, Sports have not stopped giving new life to their album and more recently they released the remix of “If You Want Me” demonstrating that their idea for the future is to not stop. “I think our plan is to just release more music more frequently, not follow the traditional model of waiting a year or two between each album. And now we’re going on tour to celebrate this album with an offering full of fun, sweat and, hopefully, a packed house.”