“Swimming”, a 2022 single by the Dublin-based garage-rock/post-punk band SPRINTS, fuses a working-class fury at capitalism’s grind with a fierce joy in fighting back. Karla Chubb’s distinctive, full voice lays out the issue: “I’ve been working full-time since I was 17 / And I still got four coins in my pocket.”
Surprisingly, her response to this poverty is not despair over the fact that her “city is sinking” in the mire of capitalism, but rather a joyful embrace ofa good fight. With no money to lose, she calls out, “Hey, let’s go swimming!” The song energetically pleads for you to join her—not intellectually, but bodily.Carried bypropellingguitars crashing at the water’s edge,“Swimming” invites you to jump in. It feels like surrender and resistance at once, and honestly, who cares—it just sounds like so much fun.
“Swimming”issuch a kick-ass song, and like much of what SPRINTS have made in their first six years, its lyrics are deeply personal,but the garage-rock heft of guitarists Chubb and Zach Stephenson, bassist Sam McCann, and drummer Jack Callan pulls everyone in.SPRINTS’ excellent new album,All That Is Over, surprisingly moves beyond this communal bodily response and appears more interested in theindividualspirit.
WhileSwimmingbegged for all of us to cannonball into the sinking city and mess things up, on this album,SPRINTS arelooking more longingly towards the horizon. “The world is burning right in front of us,” she states plainly, arguingin a sober tonethat the only way to fight the fire is that “we have love, and we have art”.
The songs speak to these two desires, linking them at a spiritual level, where joining bodies and making art are similar acts of creation, offering an individualized protection from the fire that threatensto leave us as ash heaps. However, while there is a distinct lyrical turn in their sophomore record, SPRINTS remain in a fighting mood, and the creative act is not a romantic one.
The songs—which are as heavy and loud as their previous work—speak to the fights that have left the singer injured, as she states in“Descartes“,with “a tortured heart”,forcing her toquestion her ability to love, ortomake art, because “what if all I have is war left?” The songs grapple with this fear, bruising their wayalong and striving for a united understanding between the body and mind.
This battle can be found in“Pieces“, where the singer points to a passionate love affair that left herbattered.The lyrics capture a collapse betweensexualdesire, identity, and pain,and the strange brew created by all three.The fragmentation of her lover, whose desire places the narrator inan uncomfortable position of savior,highlights the shifting power dynamics in love, where the mind and body do not fit together easily.However, it is through this desire that the heart “seizes” on an inescapable truth that is rooted in the body. The album argues, though, that there is no separating the mind and body, and even in the purest, physical moments of desire, the mind will take its due.
In SPRINTS’ songs, the consequences of acting on desire are certainly worth it, but always brutally experienced, and the bridge between mind and body will never be fully crossed.In the final track,“Desire”, this duality breaks down amid a cacophony of guitars and pounding rhythm: “Oh, I’m glad / The bitter doesn’t make you sad / The tears gleam, running down in teams / Oh, I do / believe, I’ll lick them from your cheeks / I’ll pull you up the stream / Carry crucifix and country / Just to hear you scream / Scream, and set you free.”
Through the physical act of licking, the lyrics point to the way sex can free a person, the physical act shared to push back against the bitterness of the contemporary world. But the mind can’t help butbarge in. Like in many ofSPRINTS’songs, bodily desire is elevated to a religious pilgrimage, with the singer taking on the role of a religious zealot who can change the direction of the whole nation with her tongue. It’s a passionate impulse that seeks epiphany, a moment of clarity that links the body and mind, but the desire burns too hot, and the licking turns to biting. Soon, Chubb sings, “Iwannaeat you alive.”
Sexual desire devolves into spiritual cannibalism, and the mind and body remain separated. It was a hell of aride,butdesirefalls short of transcendence.Luckily,we know that inthe next song, they’ll try again.In a SPRINTS record, theworld is, quite literally, burning down. While some songs lash out against the forces that injure the body—echoing earlier anthems like their anti–toxic masculinity banger“Rage”—most of the LP seeks to understand how desire plays out within the mind/body duality.
In“Swimming”, Chubb recognized her place in the world and said, “Fuck it, let’s fight—what do we have to lose?” InAll That Is Over,scarred and wornbut still standing, she seems to look around and say, “A lot.” This shift lends the album a heavier tone, both lyrically and musically, offering a more complex vision than the carefree exuberance of“Swimming”. SPRINTS remain emotive but more polished and reflective, questioning rather than acting—though oftenadmitting defeatas the songs grow louder and Chubb’s voice grows rawer. The result is an album still rooted in a sinking city, but instead of swimming, it’s reaching for the stars.