Sprints - The Post-Punk Fury of the Dubliners

The best new things in rock coming out of Dublin are now so numerous that the city can no longer be thought of simply as the capital of Ireland. It also has to be seen as the capital of independent rock still devoted to guitars and instantly catchy hooks. Not just Murder Capital and Fontaines D.C., or the trailblazing Gilla Band: the city offers a rich and multifaceted underground of bands, ranging from the punk power-trio Rogue Opinions to the delicate, alluring Pillow Queens. This dazzling quartet also belongs to this fertile post-punk hotbed of the new millennium, and their stock is clearly on the rise, thanks to a string of brilliant studio productions and a barrage of incendiary live performances in clubs across half of Europe.

After two convincing EPs ("Modern Job" and "Manifesto") that earned the quartet sold-out dates both in Ireland and the UK, Sprints finally broke through in January 2024, unleashing their debut LP: Letter To Self.

On the record released by the ever-attentive City Slang, Karla Chubb (vocals), Colm O'Reilly (guitar), Jack Callan (drums) and Sam McCann (bass) don't add anything new to what they'd already shown on the two aforementioned appetisers: no-frills alt-rock rooted in garage-punk, with guitars and rhythm section that catch fire easily, and, on the vocal front, an alternation between verses sung like neurotic nursery rhymes and full-throated choruses, which works to build anticipation and then release. Even faced with these eleven new tracks, it's easy to understand the appeal of a band that draws on well-established, already well-worn rock codes.

The four Dubliners know how to keep things tight: their songs waste no time on dead moments and never overdo the details. Their tracks don't have a second more than necessary, and thanks to a songwriting and performing ability that's effective at channelling everyday alienation and anger, not without the right dose of self-irony, they always hit the mark.

Although quite similar in their trajectories, "Heavy", "Adore Adore Adore", "Shadow Of A Doubt" and "A Wreck (A Mess)" each deliver one unforgettable chorus after another, adding to an already explosive live arsenal; while the more intricate "Literary Mind" reveals common ground between Karla Chubb and Dana Margolin (Porridge Radio), with whom she may not share the same poetic streak, but certainly a similar emotional range and dynamics. Wisely placed throughout the tracklist, the dramatic "Shaking Their Hands" and "Can't Get Enough Of It" have an acoustic, almost ballad-like backbone, yet remain turbulent thanks to the driving rhythm and noisy edges.

It still seems too early to say whether Sprints can truly aim for the stages and audiences won over by more established fellow countrymen, also because Letter To Self, beyond a few great songs, reveals a personality that's still raw and at times sees the band lacking distinctiveness. The Dubliners are still very young, however, and as they say, they have their whole lives ahead of them - besides, you can't expect everyone to produce a debut like "Dogrel".

After plenty of time paying their dues live both in Ireland and abroad, Sprints return with a new release on City Slang/Sub Pop that relaunches them with a vengeance.

All That Is Over (2025) firmly pushes the Dublin quartet towards a more mainstream dimension, in the best possible sense, one capable of drawing in even more of those who had merely heard of them or didn't know them at all before. For everyone else, it's a welcome confirmation and evolution of the material found on the debut album.

The "difficult second album", as it's known, is a tricky obstacle. In Sprints' case, there was also the departure of the band's original guitarist, Colm O'Reilly, who left the group in 2024 and was replaced by Zac Stephenson. So All That Is Over, according to the band, is literally a new beginning: ⟦Q1⟧.

The minimal, evocative start of "Abandon" and "To The Bone" is just a warm-up phase to settle all the emotional and sonic components of an album that alternates dark, anxious, labyrinthine, contemplative atmospheres with moments of pure distorted explosion, rough and raw, where the guitar and bass pedalboards play with settings and volumes and Karla Chubb's voice expresses itself with determined passion.

"Descartes" and "Need" are garage power in its purest form, explosiveness and red meat for the mosh-pit. While the former recalls the surf rock of Dick Dale's "Miserlou" - the soundtrack to "Pulp Fiction" - the latter is an alarming, frantic introspection on knowledge and possession.

"Beg", "Rage" and "Something's Gonna Happen", on the other hand, are more electronic and darker, hovering between darkwave and industrial without ever quite touching the shores of such vast and varied genres, not least because Sprints' ferocity suddenly resurfaces like a ball pushed below sea level and then released - "but the world has a cruel and bitter humour and you watch it slip like cigarette smoke through doors". "Pieces" is the track that best sums up the swaying, shifting feeling running through the album, a song with a dancy, punk, brazen flavour, almost messianic in its chorus; Sprints let us go and pull us back like a child with a yo-yo, in a gripping game between victim and captor, between the pulled string and the spinning disc.

"Better" and "Coming Alive" keep sailing full steam ahead, the wind still blowing through introspective lyrics and reflections on life and the relationships that bind us, on the chance to enjoy the things around us and how fleeting emotions are, yet still worth living: “And joy is mortality, joy is mortality It’s here an instant and then it’s gone instantly/ I’m coming alive, despite your best attempts at mutiny/ I’m fated to depart and we’ll come back to heart”.

"Desire" is the real icing on the cake that closes out nearly 40 minutes of frenzied, vibrant rhythms. "The good, the bad, the best you ever had", sings Karla Chubb once more - as we already noted on the occasion of their Rome show at Monk, the event that kicked off the tour set to take them around for the autumn-winter season, including overseas - it's a decadent, psychedelic ballad that feels like a blazing flamenco, rising and winding up from the bowels of the earth before exploding and fading away as if in an ecstasy of pleasure and pain.

With only a couple of albums under their belt, but already considerable live experience, Karla Chubb on guitar and vocals, Sam McCann on bass, Jack Callan on drums and Zac Stephenson on guitar have, in short, laid the groundwork to establish themselves and build the kind of musical credibility they'll now need to preserve and build on. Cheers guys!

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