Sprints: Heavy

I focused a lot of my discovery of new music in 2024 on female vocalists and bands. My favorite alternative rock album of the year is Letter to Self by Sprints. Released during the first week of the year, I’ve been listening to this one for a while and haven’t tired of its aggressive energy. Here is what I said about it almost a year ago.

Today I decided to get out of the house, take a walk, and get some sun. I googled new music and ended up on the Wiki list of new releases. Within 30 seconds I came upon an album called Letter to Self by the band Sprints. It was labelled as garage rock, and I thought that sounds exactly what I feel like listening to as I meander around the neighborhood. What a perfect choice it was. It fits right into my female artist goal, and the intro to the first track immediately grabbed my attention. By the time I got back home 30 minutes later, I had listened to most of the tracks and had enjoyed all of them.  

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way. Sprints have been around for about 5 years. They are from Dublin, Ireland and this is their debut album. They are best classified as a mix of post-punk, shoegaze, noise, indie, and garage rock. The album contains 11 tracks and runs for about 39 minutes. The cover is an upside-down photo of a woman breathing out smoke in an orange haze, possibly the lead singer, guitarist, songwriter Karla Chubb. Nothing groundbreaking is going on in any of those details, but the music is not as basic as this all sounds. 

The first track “Ticking” grabs from the start with an incessant heartbeat drumbeat that builds into a Fugazi-esque muted chord under a spoken, breathy verse. After about a minute of stress-inducing riffage where singer Chubb contemplates cutting off her hair to determine if she is alive or just living, the guitars begin gradually intensifying. At two minutes, the guitars explode into a post-rock riff underneath a psych-rock wah-wah effect that culminates in a soaring lead guitar line. The vocals develop along with the riffage before fading out at the 3-minute mark. This is a 3-minute post-punk gem and sets up the rest of the album beautifully.  

Track two starts with more Fugazi-esque riffage, reminiscent of their classic tune “Suggestion.” At this point I should note that I heard a lot of Fugazi on this album, especially in the intros. I can’t say that is because the band is influenced by Fugazi. My guess is that it is because every band that influenced Sprints was influenced by Fugazi. This makes sense because Sprints provides a twin guitar attack focused on muted riffs and explosive guitar counterpoint. This was the trademark of the original post-punk bands and it now seems so familiar that fans of this music may not even notice it anymore. It is probably expected. It is also something I would notice at this exact moment because I have listened to Fugazi’s masterpiece 13 Songs several times over the last couple of weeks. Sometimes I like albums more when I discover them because of simple connections like this. If I had not heard Letter to Self for another few months, I may not have reacted to it in the same way as I did today. 

As the album progresses, the similarities to the music of post-punk bands from the late ‘80s are inescapable. This band stands with one foot firmly in the past and the other in the present. Leader Chubb is already one of my favorite female artists of the last few years. She attacks these songs with vengeance. By the time you get to one of the album’s standout songs, track 5 “Adore, Adore, Adore,” you are fully prepared for what is about to occur. “Adore, Adore, Adore” is as catchy as it gets. The song builds and then builds some more, bringing back the stress-induced riffage of the opening track before abruptly ending. This leads straight into the record’s centerpiece, “Shadow of a Doubt.” Starting with another 2-minute stress-inducing build up, the song then explodes into a searing guitar solo and a powerful screaming chorus. It is reminiscent of early ‘80s Siouxsie and the Banshees, and that is as great a comparison/compliment as I can give to this band. The Siouxsie comparison continues with the next track as well, showing that Chubb has a clear understanding of her sound and how to sequence the tracks on her debut.   

The album starts to wrap up with track 10, “Up and Comer,” which is arguably the best track on the album. Using the band’s now trademark 2-minute build into rock and roll explosion, the tune becomes an anthem with a catchy sing-a-long chorus of the song title that is counter-balanced by a stomping closing full of all the angst that Chubb has built up over the previous 30 minutes. The title track then closes out the album with a tune that presents Chubb’s view of the world around her. Starting out strong and then closing with about a minute of spoken word, the final moments offer the perfect bookend to the album’s opener.  

I am blown away. I was hoping to find a record that I would enjoy enough to listen to while I walked around for a while. I ended up finding an album that I can see landing in my Top 20 of the year. If this is how my new plan to review new albums by female artists is going to go, then 2024 is going to be an incredible year of musical discovery.  As always, thanks for listening, and reading!

To learn more about Sprints, check out there official website or visit their Instagram page.

To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

• Best of 2024