On September 26th, Dublin band SPRINTS will release their sophomore record All That Is Over on City Slang for the rest of the world and Sub Pop for North America.
The groundwork that SPRINTS laid down with their 2024 debut, Letter To Self marked them as a musical triple threat amongst the alternative landscape: a visceral live band capable of selling out increasingly sizeable tours, who could earn five-star reviews and standout coverage in NME, DIY, Stereogum, Pitchfork, and PASTE. An Irish Choice Music Prize nod from critical corners but also land themselves on BBC Radio One. Throughout 2024 alone, they toured the UK, Europe, and America twice, ending the year with a celebratory, sold-out show at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town.
Their new album, All That Is Over, is a remarkable second effort that pushes the band's dynamics into richer territory, finding new space and nuance while also going harder than ever.
Today, the band has shared an official video, directed by Niamh Bryson, for their debut offering, “Descartes.” Inspired by a line in Rachel Cusk’s novel Outline - “Vanity is the curse of our culture” - it switches up the philosopher’s famous “I think therefore I am” into SPRINTS frontperson Karla Chubb’s own raison d’etre: “I speak so therefore I understand”. “A lot of the negativity you see in the world is rooted in vanity and the ego that your beliefs or identity are more important than somebody else’s,” she says. “‘Descartes’ explores the idea that writing for me is not just a tool to make music but a tool to process the world.”
More on All That Is Over:
All That Is Over is a remarkable record in itself - a second album that pushes the dynamics of the band into richer territory, finding new space and nuance but also going harder than ever. However there’s a potency born from the “baptism of fire” beginnings of their current line-up that infuses SPRINTS’ second with a whole new energy. “By the time we ended up working on new stuff, we’d played so many shows together that the natural chemistry me, Karla and Sam had built up over years, Zac had very quickly developed too,” Jack says.
Where many bands would find themselves burnt out and needing a break after such a hectic period of time, in the midst of the whirlwind, Karla found herself becoming more prolific than ever. “There was just so much happening and so much to process,” she explains. “I was going through a big break up with my partner who I’d been with for eight years; Colm had left the band; we’d really progressed into being professional musicians, and I was at the start of a new relationship. But then you’d look outside and it’s like the world has never been uglier. I was writing every day because there was so much going on.”
It’s into this landscape of duality and disparity, anger, ambition and a thousand feelings in between that ‘All That Is Over’ lays out its cards. Its title is taken from a lyric at the centre of ‘Beg’: an uncompromising slice of propulsive punk that seeks the cleansing of new beginnings. Written on tour buses, in soundchecks and very much in real time, it’s an album set against the backdrop of a litany of atrocities - the war in Gaza, the wildfires in LA, Trump’s executive order denying the rights of trans people - that sees SPRINTS trying to make sense of a society gone mad.