SuppliedSports
People Can’t Stop Chillin
Independent
https://sportsbandok.com/
As the moon comes up, you slide out of your bedroom window onto a musky rooftop. In one hand you hold the girl you love as she smokes a cigarette. In the other there’s a lukewarm bottle of whiskey. Looking into the night, you press play on your phone and let the mysticism of the music that flows out guide your existential thoughts into the sunrise.
People Can’t Stop Chillin, the second album from Oklahoma band Sports, is the perfect music for such a night. Letting its retro-pop sounds breathe down your spine will make you believe the vibrance and chills of ’80s youth are calling you from a seance. The album is harmonic, mixing vintage beats with soft vocals, and makes you feel oddly nostalgic, even for a decade you only recognize from the movies.
Sports’ influences, clearly, are rooted in the past, but the band takes them and evolves them into something fresh. The album can be seen as a cousin of sorts to Childish Gambino’s recent “Awaken, My Love!” The tranquil sounds can, at times, seem eerily similar, but Sports drives home the rhythms of old school pop instead of soul.
At only 20 minutes long, the seven song album will leave you aching for more. Its short length, however, is not a flaw, because when you reach the end of People Can’t Stop Chillin your finger will jump for repeat. You’ll happily start the album over again, creating an even greater appreciation for its subtle genius, such as the sax solo on “Someone You’d Rather Be Dating.” Though their sounds will hook your heart, their adventurous and romantic themes will leave you swooning. In “Whatever You Want,” Sports chooses to whimsically synthesize their vocals, creating what may be the strongest sound of the album. They keep the lyrics simple, evoking a lullaby-esque message about not wanting to let someone you love go. “Manicure” also expresses love, but in a different stroke, jumping instead to how it feels to fall into love and not out of it.
People Can’t Stop Chillin coddles ears for night owls as blue jays do for the ears of early risers. It’s an album that fuels your need to stay awake, and to appreciate the little things, like adventure and love. Whether you’re riding that bloodshot breeze in your best friends car or entwining your fingers with hers on that slanted roof, People Can’t Stop Chillin invites you to relax, believe, and journey into mind, body, or soul, in whatever shape or form that comes.
