Sporting Life

Sporting a pop streak that’s unafraid to be aggressive, the San Francisco outfit Sporting Life is set to release its new album, Rivalry, just about the time folks start preparing themselves for the springtime. Fitting, too, as the high-energy music of the group is well suited for sunnier environs. But “Spoil Yr Party”, the video of which you can stream below, is the kind of rock number that’s fit for all seasons, as it’s a driving tune that expresses a universal frustration that, in the modern day, knows no temporal constraints.

Guitarist Andrew Gomez explains this frustration to PopMatters: “The song is about the futile fight against a mundane existence: the ‘get up, eat, go to work, go back to bed’ life. We like to think we are one big break away from escaping the average. In truth, it requires some real bravery, so many of us (and certainly I) do what the narrator does in the chorus/second verse: drink his face off, act obnoxiously at parties, surround himself with diversions, and act like he’s smarter than everyone else. It’s a celebration of the fleeting. The footage is taken from a 1980 documentary called Skateboard Madness that featured a bit on the popularity of roller-skating. The footage makes it easy to be taken in. it seems like a short documentary on a fantastic time that never existed.” - PopMatters.com

As we patiently wait for the forthcoming LP from San Francisco’s Sporting Life, we’re pleased to present a wonderful new video from the group for the tracks “Dull & Safe” and “Forces at Play”. The video was shot beautifully by Frank Door, while the band provided the massive layers of sound that seems to be part of a signature sound they have developed in a very short time. It’s all just so momentous:

You can get a live taste of Sporting Life Saturday night (after Phono del Sol, of course) at the Hemlock. Their debut LP, Rivalry, will be released next month on Breakup Records. - The Bay Bridged

With nearly three years since the release of their first album Singles, we are excited and privileged to premiere the latest single and video from San Francisco’s Sporting Life, with the rushing storm of, “Tsunami”. Welcome back the city’s sons of Keith Brasel, Andrew Gomez, Ryan McGee, and Terry Yerves as they lament what SF has become while sending out dove to help toward a hopeful future of what it could still be.

Through the corridors of Amtrak freights parallel to the nearby lines of freighters are the catacombs called home in the video for “Tsunami”. The pains of loving too strong while the world forces you into the foxholes of priced out hide-aways are sung like the wary and weary aftermath of being washed of earthly comforts. Shots of train paths and tunnels are set to melodic guitar solos that blend into the material of vocals and instrumental mix that help to simulate the feeling of riding the rails while exploring the underground trails at the same time. The symbols of trains have a certain symbol of the wandering figure that floats from station to station, town to town to satisfy a curiosity or keep ahead of some pursuing authoritative power. Sporting Life maintain a somber tone that laments an overpowering love, while planted roots weather the cyclones, and storms that test what a person is made of. But the “tomorrow come what may” leaves a light on at the end of the tunnel, while the worlds beneath the commuter rails offer opportunities of survival and intrigues for a better, and possibly beautiful future. We caught up with Sporting Life’s Keith Brasel about the new recordings, the new video, the transitions of San Francisco, and more, following the video premiere of “Tsunami”. - Impose Magazine

The Incredible Tearing Body

Words by Sean Moeller, Illustration by Johnnie Cluney, Recording engineered by Shawn Biggs at Studio Paradiso, San Francisco, Calif.

The concept of a man is taken down many roads in the music of the Bay Area band Sporting Life. It's that concept that these young men find to be so sporting. It's the idea of sporting as it consists of risking the sanity and safety of a body, of a man as a simple thing like a body that runs largely as an automatic machine. It's sporting to place different men into various situations where the odds are stacked against them, where their greatest hope could only come when the streets have thinned out some, when there are less people to compete against. It's then, when a reality sets in, where you see what someone will put themselves through to not get trampled.

The songs heard in this four-song session are evident of fellows who don't take no for an answer. There are brick walls in front of them and they just get a hotter head of steam, lower the shoulder and try to make the point of impact as solid as physically possible. They sing, "I'm a man, I'll take what I want," on "Immigrant," and at another time in the song, we're informed that we don't really have the capacity to know what the human body can take because we haven't been through what a certain body's been through. We'd be surprised by how much a body can tear, with the implied addendum something along the lines of, "A whole helluva lot without ripping."

The men that wander through and in and out of Sporting Life's often propulsive and scenic sonics are drifters, getting by on day-old rolls and some kind of calloused will to make it - or rather to outlast the next guy, which isn't really all that bad of a strategy. It's as good of a survival technique as they come. Those in "The Way I Grew," are hangers-on to one of those last days, or the day after the last day for most others. They sing about being the former and being the "new one too," and being "the sidewalk when the people are gone." They've fallen between, so out of touch and so out of love, that the only thing that can now be done is something that's going to mend the tear, that's going to make them serviceable and able to perform in the next match or the next war. - Daytrotter.com