It didn’t take long for 2024 to deliver its first truly great album of the young year. It took five fucking days, to be exact.
The mighty force kicking down the door on ’24 comes from SPRINTS, the fiery Irish punk quartet who unleashed debut album Letter To Self this past Friday (January 5) via City Slang. With a sound that blends the grime of fellow Dubliners The Murder Capital with the grit of Savages and more familiar shadow-spun classics like Siouxsie and Bauhaus, SPRINTS package a piss n’ vinegar fireball of a record that’s equal parts abrasive and inviting. It’s a remarkable and cohesive effort for a band that first formed in 2019 and have issued a series of EPs since (including 2021’s Manifesto and 2022’s A Modern Job).
Buoyed by Letter To Self, the year ahead should be an exciting one, as SPRINTS have captured the tension and unease felt by many, channeled through a cleansing cacophony of aggressive euphoria. The band crashes the States in March for appearances at South-by-Southwest, and will play shows in seven cities across the country around the Austin festival, with a March 22 twirl at Elsewhere in New York City as the closest to us here in Boston.
What will be on display for American audiences should be a wonderful sight to behold and an enchanting sound to unfold.
“[Letter To Self] is a deeply personally and autobiographical album lyrically and in its key themes, while sonically it explores a space inspired by our love of early-’80s gothic, ’90s noise-rock and more modern influences,” says singer, guitarist and lead song-writer Karla Chubb. “It revisits our most vulnerable moments and imbues them with visceral garage-punk. It aims to take the things that are considered inherently negative — feelings of anxiety, anger and rage, and turning them into a positive. Using our experiences to fuel us and pouring them into a positive outlet. It’s cathartic, it’s honest, it’s raw.”
It just might be 2024’s greatest album.