Review Summary: Why walk when you can sprint into 2024?
After amassing a considerable live following during their inception in 2019, the Dublin punk four-piece have finally released their first full length album through German label City Slang. It was about time that Sprints finally tried to encapsulate their incendiary live performances on record, but does this
Letter To Self manages to trap their furies into media for home consuming, air guitar secret shows in the kitchen, and recording your drunk uncle dancing tie in head during Christmas dinner for future embarrassment, or even potential blackmailing? Well, yes and almost yes.
A good part of the record was released drop by drop through last year, so their fans could get both satisfied and even thirstier for what was coming. Everyone’s first contact with Sprints will be different but mine was through the video of “Shadow of a Doubt”, just three weeks ago. In the video, guitar ripper and singer Karla Chubb starts picking her guitar timidly under a green light, anxiously singing the first words of the song while the rest of the band members are brought to shape one by one (where have I seen this before?). If you’ve never listened to them, you’d think things are about to go on smoothly transitioning into some deadpan post punk, but at some point, Karla elevates her tone, her nerves wreck and the track explodes into a fervent noise punk anthem. The same formula is applied to the first three tracks with different alterations in intensity or speed, but the structure remains the same at its core. This was slightly grating the first time I put on the album, as I felt that the band was indulging into the same safe method to build their songs, but third track “Cathedral” was the moment I really felt Sprints were unto something. This tune sees them firing on all cylinders with the ferocity of a freight train about to go off rails. Followed by one of the most unique tracks of the album, “Shaking Their Hands”, which is also one of my favorites, the album peaks just before hitting the middle section, and then things just slow down a notch.
The second half of
Letter To Self approaches things with a bit less of ambition. “Adore Adore Adore”, which was also released as a single, and “Shadow of a Doubt” manage to keep the momentum going. The production shines here, and the sound of the band has settled in nicely. Pounding guitar tone, a robust rhythm section and Karla achieving a nice balance between cold, warm, and visceral singing. Unfortunately, “Literary Mind” and “A Wreck (A Mess)” don’t have the same immediate factor or spark than songs like “Cathedral” or “Shadow of a Doubt” have. Far from suggesting they are bad songs, what I mean is that
Letter to Self doesn’t manage to end at the same level that when it started, and this couple of songs are the first sign. “Up and Comer” is a raging post punk cut in the very same vein of bands like Savages that thrives in its intensity but it goes off too soon to have a lasting effect, and the title track that closes the album doesn’t really deliver a feeling of closure, but instead focuses on making sure that the lyrical theme that runs through the eleven tracks of Sprints’ debut gets through: ““No matter what you're born into, or have experienced, there's a way to emerge from this and be happy within yourself.”
All things considered, it's a good thought for starting 2024, trying to channel the frustration and anger that comes with seeing the last year spilling its woes into this new page of our history like nothing will ever change. But if new music is enough to contribute to that little catharsis, then
Letter to Self is undoubtedly a pretty good option to start off this new chapter, and for Sprints it may be even the beginning of something truly special.
