Sprints and their ‘psychotic,’ ‘amazing’ found family
Through humble beginnings rehearsing in a shed in Coolock, in the Dublin suburbs, Sprints toiled recording songs on voice notes after writing them in bedrooms. Delving further, she enthuses that "something just switched inside me, and I decided to not be so scared or held back anymore." Hitting her late 20s at the time, her initial reaction was sadly instinctual: "I don't how much time I've left in the music industry as a woman, so you better make the most of it. I finally accepted myself and that's what the music helped me to do. Now, I don't care what people think about me whereas before I was so terrified, and was so crippled by stage fright that I couldn't have dreamt of ever getting in the crowd. And now I'm in the crowd pretty much half of the set!"
Breaking out of these cuffs is the ambition of Sprints. It harkens back to their dealing with Chubb's innermost turmoil: "It's like these invisible restraints that you didn't invent yourself. I wasn't born thinking I only have until like 35 to make it in the music industry. Or, like I'm gonna retire out of it involuntarily. There's a lot of pressures still in place and obviously things are changing a lot for the better but I think growing up, it was very hard to almost be racing against that clock constantly. It's very crippling and it's a very tough thing to deal with because I don't want the time to run out, but there's very little you can do about it."
This idea culminates within Letter To Self. It's an anthology of catharsis Chubb is using to move on with her life. It's rich in hooks that splinter through your cheeks hauling you down into the murky waters that Chubb casts her lyrical net towards. Admitting that their debut eventually came to life after initially completing a couple of songs, "It felt like we had the direction that we needed to follow. It wasn't like filling in the blanks," she says. "But it was kind of like, okay, this is naturally spilling out of me so we just have to run headfirst into it, and just go for the authenticity, the honesty, and the vulnerability."
It's not always been an easy spill for Chubb. Comparing it to writer's block, "but it's an emotional block I had for a long time," she says. "And maybe that's a part of my diagnosed ADHD…I hyper-fixate on stuff. I get so focused on things that if I don't get something out of my head, I will ruminate and think about it constantly, and when I finally admit it to myself, I open the gate and the fixation is allowed to finish." Enter Chubb's foray into music.
From their start in a shed to supporting rising Irish punk-rap trio Kneecap at iconic venue Olympia – and this year heading to the States for the first time – Sprints' star is certainly rising. Most important is the impression they're having. "I don't want to sound like I'm talking like Nelson Mandela," Chubb laughs, "Like, obviously, it's music, it only has so much of a stretch for people to care about it, and it's nice to see that because I care about a lot of music. And there's a lot of music that helped me through emotional times."
With Sprints, the four-piece are vocalising and soundtracking modern life. Living in Dublin, means they're in the centre of a changing landscape both politically and socially. As well as, for Chubb, aiding her in many ways, including accepting her bisexuality, most prominently on single "Literary Mind". While she recognises that it's not specific trials for herself ("I do think that things like immigration and losing friends to distance or financial isolation…a lot of us are facing with how the world is") it doesn't lessen the sting: "I've had to deal with a lot of friends emigrating and a lot of struggles in the economy and a lot of pressures with trying to survive and in a very difficult city. It's been amazing to have Sprints to go through all that with because it's almost like with all this change constantly in life Sprints has been the constant. It has become a real community; there's friends who constantly help us or partners or families. It's kind of like this little weird, very unrelated, dysfunctional, psychotic family. But it's amazing."
gglum on finding her footing in the industry
“Once you start performing, you quickly realise you don’t want to spend a whole set moping around,” grins South London songwriter Ella Smoker, otherwise known as gglum. “When I started gglum, I was this angsty teenager but as I’ve grown up, I do feel a lot more optimistic. I do think it’s very funny that the project is called gglum but the music is only getting happier.”
Dreamy debut single "Who Don’t I Care?" established gglum as a powerful purveyor of heartbroken bedroom pop, but Ella Smoker’s first EP, Once The Edge Has Worn Off underlined her new position as pained champion of pretty vulnerability. 2022’s "Weak Teeth" shook things up though, with rattling hope and wide-eyed romance replacing the down-trodden despair. What comes next pushes that joy even further.
Smoker has always drifted towards music. Growing up, songs would always be there as background noise and a young Smoker decided to audition for the church choir to avoid a test at primary school. She thought she was so clever, until her mum made her go for the next three years. At first, Smoker dabbled in making her own, harmony-driven music that ended up sounding like the ambient, experimental folk of Grouper as well as a spell making Bruno Mars-inspired pop.
Smoker always wanted to make music, but a career as a musician wasn’t really on the cards. “I just enjoyed doing it. It was fun, but I didn’t think that becoming an artist was an option,” she explains. A group of friends regularly uploaded music to Soundcloud but still had day jobs while an aunt was a piano teacher. “I’d never seen anyone in my hemisphere able to survive on being creative. I was planning on releasing music for funsies, then hopefully going and working at a record label.”
Then came ‘Why Don’t I Care?’ Described by Smoker as a transitional song, the shimmering, reflective anthem came after lots of trials and plenty of errors as Smoker tried to make something that felt authentic. “I couldn’t get a grip on writing something that I felt happy with until a friend introduced me to The Microphones,” says Smoker, with the cult rock band swiftly blowing her mind. “It felt like my brain exploded and a switch immediately turned,” she recalls, finally understanding that there are no rules with songwriting. "Why Don’t I Care?" was uploaded to Spotify as well as Soundcloud because Smoker thought it would be cool to see her name on the platform. Tens of thousands of streams swiftly followed.
Lucy Dacus on “It’s All Gonna Break” by Broken Social Scene
When I first heard Broken Social Scene they kind of flipped my idea of what song-writing was. How long is this song, like ten minutes? For me, that was unheard of at the time. They're very cinematic, and they're definitely thinking in terms of scenes - or at least, it makes me think in terms of scenes. I was studying film at the time, so I was always thinking visually, and they had strong visual components.
‘It's All Gonna Break’ is them at their most exploratory, or most daring, song-writing. There are so many different sections to the song that it feels like six songs in one, but it was one idea, so treat it like a short song. I internalised some of that lesson - ‘if a song is not done, just keep writing it’. I'm never 'I want to write a short song, or a long song', but I do set out like I have to keep writing until the thought is said. Sometimes it takes two minutes, sometimes it takes ten minutes.
I was in my friend's car at high school and we were listening to the whole record. It ended on this one and that's when we parked the car outside my parents’ house and we just listened to it, we wanted to finish the record. That's all we were doing, just listening to this song and being led by it.
I like their last record too, again it’s like they were writing with characters in mind. The different voices occupy specific thematic world and also sonic worlds, and I thought that was a cool way to separate a push and pull. I don't know if they intended that, but listening to it they're super easy to analyse through a cinematic lens.
Three things to get excited about this week
The book: Music history books can be hard to get right. It’s easy to fall into the clichés that define genres and eras in the popular imagination. But Gillian McCain and Legs McNeill’s Please Kill Me truly feels like a breath of fresh air. Though the book has been a cult favourite since 1996, it’s rearing its head again in a Gen-Z resurgence. A must-read for any self-respecting music nerd, the book chronicles the history of punk in an oral history format and compiles hundreds of hours of interviews with the movement’s founding figures. You’ll hear from Iggy Pop, the Ramones, Debbie Harry, Bebe Buell, members of the MC5, and more in their own words. Rather than inserting an authoritative voice, McCain and McNeill let the interviews speak for themselves. The authors allow the transcripts to both compliment and contradict each other, requiring a level of interpretive savvy from readers as they strive to figure out what really happened. Truly, this book is stunning, heartbreaking, disgusting, funny, and enticing all at once. If you haven’t picked up this volume before, now’s your chance.
The EP: If you asked me to tell you how I discovered this little record, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Somehow, te!jay’s Fall Collection 002 (inspired by internal chaos) — 8 tracks of witty, jazz-tinged R&B — just snuck into my lap amidst the holiday rush. Few details can be found online about the album’s creator, except that they’re part of management collective back2morrow. But details aren’t really necessary when the tracks are as smooth as these ones. If you only have time for one, check out “American Rent” first.
The tribute: “We’ve got a tape we’d like to play you,” A24 announced this week across its social media platforms. Last year’s remaster by the production company of Stop Making Sense brought the iconic concert film to a new generation. Now, A24 Music has revealed that it will release a 16-track — and 16-artist — Stop Making Sense tribute album to keep the momentum going. Paramore will be up first, as revealed in a teaser trailer for the project, with a cover of “Burning Down the House.”
What’s the deal with the ‘No AI Fraud Act’?
The rise of generative AI has been on the minds and lips of virtually everyone, everywhere over the last year. And with that has come and endless array of opinions and concerns and perseveration over just what to do about it. The music community has been particularly puzzled with this new problem since the release of ghostwriter977’s independent release of “Heart on My Sleeve,” a track which seamlessly employed AI-generated copies of the voices of Drake and The Weeknd. While some, like Grimes, have embraced GenAI full stop, others are voicing major concerns, or at least trepidation. Thus, the introduction of the ‘No AI Fraud Act’ in the US Congress came as a welcome piece of news this week to many industry folk. The act is a first step towards establishing a federal “right of publicity” law in the US, and intellectual property provision which, according to Music Business Worldwide, “protects against the unauthorized use of a person’s likeness, voice or other aspects of their identity.” While an extensive framework of global regulations cover copyrights and publishing rights, regulating the actual use of one’s likeness is relatively uncharted territory. The bill’s sponsors make clear, however, that its purpose is not to undermine technological innovation, but rather to put guardrails up to prevent its unbridled use. Executives from Sony, UMG, NMPA, and the Human Artistry CampAIgn have publicly applauded the bill.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our 20-track playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists.
These are the songs our editors and writers have on repeat right now, taken from the hundreds of tracks released in the last seven days. Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Scout & Phoebe Green, Maud, late night drive home, Sofi Paez, Etta Marcus, and coverstar Willow Avalon.