What happens when a college band graduates?
The members of Sports — a power-pop band formed at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio — don't all share the same answer. But guitarist and vocalist Carmen Perry and her bandmates continue to pursue the project, and Perry can already tell she'll be mining this period of post-collegiate uncertainty for the next songs she writes.
"Growing up and moving on has been a theme that's pretty present in [2015 album] 'All of Something,' so I think our next release will be about dealing with the fallout from that stuff," said Perry, who graduated last year.
On Thursday, Sports — which also includes Catherine Dwyer on bass/vocals and Jack Washburn on guitar/vocals, the band's other consistent members — will perform at the Ottobar in Remington.
Formed during Perry's sophomore year, Sports found unexpected success with 2014's "Sunchokes," a short LP comprised of punchy and melodic garage-rock musings on relationships. Last year, they followed it with "All of Something" (Father/Daughter Records), which displayed a more controlled sound without losing their energetic spirit.
"From my perspective, ['Sunchokes'] was a lot of vomiting feelings and emotions, sort of just in a way that wasn't that meticulous or planned out," Perry, 23, said. "I think 'All of Something,' we all thought about it a lot more and it was definitely more crafted than 'Sunchokes' was, and more deliberate."
Perry has been "vomiting" those feelings into songs since high school, as a way to exercise emotions she otherwise couldn't express to anyone. She also has a solo project called Addie Pray, of which the songs are more "in my own head than Sports songs."
"For me, it's a really cathartic process," she said. "I use songwriting to work through things like that, so that's why it's been so overwhelming to be putting it out in public and getting attention over stuff that is basically me vomiting onto a page."
"It's definitely still a little scary, but I'm more comfortable with it than I was when I first started recording and releasing music," she added. "It will never not be weird to have people know intimate things about me that they know from these songs being public."
Perry, who lives in Philadelphia with Dwyer, already feels the distance from her college days, when she majored in religious studies.
Of a recent trip back to campus to attend Washburn's graduation, she said, "It's really strange going back to a place where I was at for four years, and not all the people who made it really special for me were there still."
Though much of Perry's songwriting is autobiographical and drawn from her life in college, she thinks most of Sports' material still holds a wider appeal.
"I kind of feel like it's relatable just because it's so specific and I'm not trying to make it relatable," she said.
"I think it's relatable to people because it's about stuff that everyone goes through, so it doesn't matter that I was in college when I wrote them, because I'm sure the same stuff will keep happening," she said. "Some of the older [songs] are a little harder for me to listen to, just because they're about specific times in my life and feelings that I don't necessarily feel anymore."
Sports' Baltimore stop kicks off the band's summer-long tour. It's only the third time they'll be hitting the road together, with college in the past casting an air of uncertainty over the band and plans.
Perry, Dwyer and Washburn are working on new material, with the goal of releasing something in the next few months.
"I don't think it's going to be that different from our other stuff, but we are thinking about recording this one ourselves, because all of us individually make our own music," Perry said. "I think if we put our heads together it will be pretty cool."
"If 'All of Something' was about waiting to leave," she added, "then this is going to be about sitting around and not doing much and being frustrated."