#sam mccann

“I’m sending in the photos from the SPRINTS show a few hours ago. In case you want to include any details, the band played Letter to Self, their new single, “Feast,” and covered “Decepticon” by Le Tigre with guest singer Julia Vassallo of Slow Fiction (Slow Fiction opened the show and are touring with SPRINTS again; the two bands toured together back in March). During the final song of the set, vocalist Karla Chubb got in the crowd and crowd-surfed back to the stage.” —Edwina Hay

Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The first great album of the year came out five days into it, belying the post-New Year haze and bitter cold, walloping us into paying attention. Letter to Self, the debut LP from Dublin post-punk quartet SPRINTS, out via City Slang, is a tremendously assured collection of songs that the band describes as "to-the-bone" personal. They're led by singer-songwriter Karla Chubb, whose taut shouts, full-throated yells, and pained but deliberate lyrics match the utter tenseness of the compositions. She sings about her life, and topics ranging from depression and ADHD to sexuality and Catholicism, but without the overt autobiography that can plague even the most well-intentioned writers. Her singing sonically traverses the sinews of Colm O'Reilly's lead guitar riffs and bassist Sam McCann and drummer Jack Callan's brawny rhythm section. Each song is its own journey, and when they end, it feels like you've been holding your breath the whole time.

Though SPRINTS showed promise with their early material, they sound like a complete band with their debut. Working with Gilla Band's Daniel Fox in the studio helped them embrace the charged intensity that makes their live shows so thrilling. Letter to Self begins with "Ticking", the song that's been at the start of their live setlists, on which foreboding guitar, a double-tapped snare, and Chubb's chants build to a false explosion before the full beat truly drops. (Moments like this make it clear that the majority of the band are horror and sci-fi fans, but not necessarily obsessed with jump scares.) "Heavy" builds up similarly, with twangy guitar squalls and trilling drum fills, as Chubb asks pointed questions like, "Do you ever feel like the room is heavy?" before melismatic belting, lamenting that she's "watching the world go round the window beside me." Elsewhere, they combine the frankness of Fontaines D.C. with the cascades of Midwest emo ("Shaking Their Hands") and delve into swirling soundscapes ("Can't Get Enough of It"). As for Chubb, she knows when to scream; at her most full-throated, like on "Shadow Of A Doubt", she's a dead ringer for Courtney Love.

As much as SPRINTS' instrumentation purveys the spirit of their songs, Chubb is a deft lyricist, writing clever rhymes and cutting barbs alike. On "Cathedral", she chides the heartlessness of the Irish Catholic church when it comes to their views on queer folks like her: "He's singing from a hymn sheet, I'm singing for the others / They say I've gone cold while I'm sat drowning in the gutter." "Adore Adore Adore" bemoans the sexist double standards of the music industry, wherein anybody but a straight cisgender male is subject to only love or hate. "Am I everything you wish you had?" Chubb asks, "Or am I everything you detest?" Perhaps best is the album's closer, the title track, where Chubb honors her own ability to conquer trauma, generational and otherwise. "I can shake the leaves of hereditary," she sings, pronouncing the final word "he-re-di-tree" in a cheeky bit of wordplay, continuing, "I don't have to take the path that was carved out in front of me." On Letter to Self, Chubb and SPRINTS in general toss off a world of fear and shame in favor of self-love and acceptance.

SPRINTS plays Schubas on Tuesday night. Back in January, I spoke with Callan about Letter to Self, playing live, horror, and film scores. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity, and know the Irish band is excited to be in Chicago mere days after our raucous St. Patrick's Day celebration.

Since I Left You: One of the things I love about Letter to Self is that the instrumentation and the song structures engage the themes just as much as the lyrics do. Can you talk about creating a mood between words and instruments?

Jack Callan: That boils down to the songwriting process. It usually starts with Karla. It could be one riff on guitar or start with lyrics or melody. A lot of the time, and especially with the two opening tracks on the album, "Ticking" and "Heavy", from the get-go, we talked about building a literal feeling of anxiety. That's probably the case for most of the songs. We're trying to match the emotions of the music. The intensity of the song dictates the dynamics. It's quite natural: We all know each other so well.

SILY: As the drummer, specifically, you're at the forefront of toying with our expectations, especially on a song like "Ticking". You think it's going to explode into a rousing moment, but it pulls back. It eventually explodes, but there's a push-pull throughout.

JC: Yeah, absolutely, particularly with "Ticking". It's probably one of the oldest songs written on the album. We probably wrote it at the same time as the songs on our second EP. It didn't really sit well with those [songs], but we always knew we were going to come back to it. When we started properly planning for [Letter to Self], we knew it was going to be the opening track because it has such a slow build. You think it's going to kick in, but it doesn't. Live, we start sets with that, and it sets the tone nicely and builds the anxiety.

SILY: One of the most powerful things about Karla's lyrics is that she asks questions. "Do you ever feel like the room is heavy?" You don't know who she's talking to, but as a listener, it almost feels like she's talking to you. How do you feel about that confrontation when playing live?

JC: I think it's incredibly effective. The way Karla writes is very personal and vulnerable, but in a way it's not so specific you know exactly the circumstance what she's talking about.

SILY: The album title Letter to Self reminds me of a diary. It's a cliché album descriptor when writers say that a personal album is "like reading someone's diary," but this one truly is. If I were to pick up somebody's diary without knowing them, it wouldn't make total sense. I might be able to relate to vague feelings, but I wouldn't know the specifics they refer to. Do you think the record achieves an ideal level of abstraction?

JC: Absolutely. A lot of it was about dealing with those emotions or experiences. Since we've started out as a band, Karla's become more comfortable being vulnerable and open in her songwriting. Our first EP had some personal things, and our second EP was about the self and everyday life, but this is more to-the-bone personal. I think that felt very natural to Karla. There's an honesty to it. She's writing about her own experiences and how she feels about them.

SILY: How is playing the songs live from an emotional standpoint? Do you find yourselves in a similar headspace to when you recorded them, or do you let loose?

JC: I think the recording process, especially for Karla, was more taxing emotionally. Before recording, we rehearsed songs a bunch, and we messed around with demos for a while, but because the lyrics are so personal, putting down the tracks in the studio, that's when it hits you that the songs are going to go out into the world and everyone will listen to them. When you're in the studio, and there's no live audience, just us and Daniel Fox, our producer, it just feels a lot closer. By the time you get to the live set, the music isn't just ours anymore. People will interpret it any way they want. The live shows take on a life of their own, as well. It's more about the band at that point. The live shows have a lot of energy, a lot of fun. On stage, we've never really taken ourselves too seriously. We have a bit of a laugh, even when the subject matter is heavy.

SILY: Have the live versions instrumentally or structurally taken on a new life? Do you extend things or change things up at all?

JC: A little bit. Not as much with some of the album tracks yet, because we haven't been playing them as long. It's usually something that happens naturally. Some of the songs from the EPs we play differently. "Literary Mind" was recorded again for the album. It's is way faster than the original recording. We recorded it and started playing it live. How it is on the album is closer to how it is live.

SILY: Do you have a favorite of the Letter to Self songs to play live?

JC: Probably "Cathedral". The start of that song is a bit scary, but the chorus is proper all-out headbanging. We've played it a little bit live, but not for that long.

SILY: I can imagine that's a cathartic song for you to play live. You're just pounding along.

JC: Yeah. Loud and fast.

SILY: What's the story of the cover art?

JC: It was a still taken from the music video for "Adore, Adore, Adore". During the video, there's a scene where Karla has been abducted and wrapped up in gauze. If you look closely, you may notice the thick eyebrows and mustache: I'm one of the abductors. There's a plastic bowl with water in it her head was being dunked into. The photo was taken from underneath.

SILY: Something not everyone would realize just listening to the album is how much all of you--except for Sam--love horror films and sci-fi.

JC: It was definitely a big inspiration for the videos in particular. It was thematically linked to the "Adore, Adore, Adore" video, but also just a bit creepy and weird.

SILY: Over the past 10 years or so, there's been a resurgence of artful horror films that aren't just genre pieces, that deal with a lot of the same themes on this record. They use an aesthetic to explore themes that might be traditionally explored in different genres. Do you have some favorite contemporary horror films?

JC: I'm definitely a big fan of Hereditary and Midsommar. They were a reference point, slightly thematically, and aesthetically as well. Slightly creepy but not slasher horror. Stuff that's unsettling. Especially with the music. It's not jump scares, just that slight feeling of, "I don't feel right about this."

SILY: Have you ever thought about trying film scoring?

JC: I would absolutely love that. I saw the original Suspiria not that long ago that Goblin did the score to. It's super weird. The film's amazing, but the score is incredible as well. When I saw it, I thought, "I could totally see us doing something like this." It would be a lot of fun.

SILY: I know Letter to Self just came out, but are you the type of band constantly coming up with new songs? Or do you have to sit down and dedicate time to it?

JC: There's constantly new stuff knocking around. There are already demos for what could be album 2. Even from [Letter to Self], there are plenty of demos that couldn't make it in the end. You do eventually need to find time to sit down all together and work on stuff. It's increasingly difficult as we're on the road so much, but we need to block in weeks throughout the year so we have time to do it.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, watching, or reading lately that's caught your attention?

JC: I just finished Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. The last book I read was Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, which came out 20-30 years before Dracula. It's similar, with vampires, but there's a lesbian love element to it. It's really good, only 150 pages. A lot of people reckon Bram Stoker stole a lot of his ideas for Dracula from it. There's a lot of what we now think of as vampire lore in it from what we [attribute to] Bram Stoker. There's a castle in vague Eastern Europe [in Carmilla], so he definitely lifted some ideas from it.

I went to see Spy Kids in the cinema last week. That was a lot of fun. I don't know why they were showing it, but it was a favorite of mine as a kid. I'm going to see Poor Things tomorrow.

On Saturday, September 28, 2024, Dublin’s SPRINTS returned to New York City for the second time this year to headline Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY. They were joined by NYC’s Slow Fiction on this tour again (they were the supporting act for their show at Zone One at Elsewhere back in March) and was a fantastic way to spend a Saturday night. The band played a fiery set and I truly appreciated them taking the stage promptly at 9 and being home two hours later.

CapitolFax: 

Democrat J. B. Pritzker holds a comfortable lead in the race for Governor of Illinois, with GOP incumbent Bruce Rauner and other candidates trailing. The number of undecided voters is relatively small with one month left to go in the campaign for governor. That is the major conclusion of a statewide poll of likely voters released today by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The poll was conducted September 24-29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage point for the entire sample. The poll covered a sample of 1,001 registered voters. The election analysis presented here is based on 715 likely voters. The margin of error for likely voters is 3.7 percentage points.

When asked, “If the election were held today…who would you vote for?” Forty-nine percent chose Pritzker; 27 percent chose Rauner with 4 percent who selected the conservative Sam McCann and 4 percent who selected Libertarian Kash Jackson. The remaining 17 percent were undecided.

Pritzker led in Chicago by 65 percent to 22 percent and the five suburban Collar Counties by 53 percent to 23 percent. Pritzker and Rauner were essentially tied downstate with Pritzker at 35 percent and Rauner at 34 percent. Pritzker enjoyed an 81 percent to 6 percent lead among Democrats while Rauner took a 67 percent to 6 percent lead among Republican voters. McCann was taking 7 percent among Republican voters while Jackson garnered 6 percent among Republicans.

In the other high-profile statewide race for a constitutional office, Attorney General, State Senator Kwame Raoul held a 36 percent to 26 percent lead over Champaign attorney Erika Harold with 39 percent undecided. Raoul led in Chicago by 50 percent to 23 percent with 26 percent undecided. He also led in the Collar Counties by 41 percent to 25 percent with 34 percent undecided; Harold led downstate by 27 percent to 19 percent with 53 percent undecided.

WLS-TV: 

Mark Murray at NBC News:

WASHINGTON — In the billionaire-versus-multimillionaire contest for Illinois governor, Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker leads incumbent Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner by 16 points, according to a new NBC News/Marist poll.

Pritzker gets support from 46 percent of registered voters in the state, while Rauner gets 30 percent. Libertarian nominee Kash Jackson is at 6 percent in the poll, while fellow third-party candidate Sam McCann is at 4 percent.

Thirteen percent say they’re undecided for the election on November 6.

By a 2-to-1 margin, Illinois adults have a negative opinion of Rauner — who made his fortune as an investor — with 52 percent viewing him unfavorably, versus 26 percent who see him in a favorable light.

By comparison, Pritzker — whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain — is slightly above water, with 38 percent viewing him favorably, versus 35 percent unfavorably.

The Rauner-Pritzker race is on track to be the most expensive gubernatorial race in American history; nearly $90 million in TV and radio ads have already been spent in the race, according to ad-spending data from Advertising Analytics.