Fans of Sprints may spend all of ‘Abandon’, the first track on the Dublin band’s new record ‘All That Is Over’, waiting for a moment that came in many of the best songs on their debut, last year’s five-star ‘Letter To Self’. They’d start a song as a suffocating slow burn, let it brim to its edges with anxiety and dread, then eventually rip into an explosive end section full of spiralling guitars and howled vocals which would set all of its amassed tension ablaze. ‘Abandon’, indeed, starts this record with a creeping tempo, hushed volume and a building queasiness – but no such release comes.
It’s not that ‘All That Is Over’ does away with the band’s trademark cathartic intensity, but it’s palpably different. If ‘Letter To Self’ was a record of exorcism, ‘All That Is Over’ is one of control. While the former was marked lyrically by frontwoman Karla Chubb’s verbalisations of shame and anxiety, here she’s self-possessed and acerbic as she flips between examining pressing ideas – ‘Descartes’ asks about the role of art in healthy discourse, ‘Rage’ is a character study of a Trump or Farage figure – and confidently exploring lust and desire (“The tears gleam running down in teams / I do believe I’ll lick them from your cheeks,” Chubb sings on ‘Desire’).
Perhaps because of the bigger rooms they’ve been playing since ‘Letter to Self’, it feels like Sprints’ goal on this record is songs that are more sculpted and anthemic than before. Their choruses are given space to announce themselves, making tracks like ‘Beg’ and ‘Pieces’ feel confident and authoritative, and creating their boldest, most melodic hook so far on the penultimate track ‘Coming Alive’. It definitely takes a confident band to make ‘Desire’, the album’s closing track which patiently builds a spaghetti-western guitar idea into a noise-rock assault over the course of six minutes.
While much of the experimentation and differentiation on this record is promising, its weakness tends to be exposed on tracks that are more indebted to the Sprints formula. Two driving and heavy tracks, ‘Descartes’ and ‘Need’, come one after another on the first side of the album. On these, the tumbling drums and piercing guitars feel held back by the more measured songwriting, and one may find themself longing for the pure, visceral, incendiary blasts that Sprints have previously done so well.
Still, there’s proof that Sprints still got that intensity in them on the album’s best track, ’Something’s Gonna Happen’, a classic slow-burn-into-intense-rager infused with the genuine fire and danger which is missing elsewhere. It’s good to hear Sprints develop on ‘All That Is Over’, but to do so without extinguishing that fire is the fine line they walk.
