The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. I’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments. With the holiday doldrums in full effect for new music, I’m being extremely lenient about what counts as a recent-ish release, an under-heard album and a short-ish review to wax hagiographic about my favorite album of the year.
In the lead-up to Sprints’ second album, All That Is Over, there was nearly as much reason for worry as there was for excitement.
On the positive side of the ledger, Sprints are an exhilarating young rock band featuring the supernova of charisma, Karla Chubb, on lead vocals. Chubb pens lyrics that vacillate between darkly poetic and wryly humorous, and they’re backed by music with enough force to completely demolish resistance to their literary-minded emotionality. Plus, the Dublin quartet had already proven they could make a great LP with their appropriately lauded debut album, Letter to Self.1
Causes for concern included the departure of original guitarist Colm O’Reilly amid the band’s 2024 tour, and the relatively short gestation of the new album. Sprints formed in 2019 and released their first album in January 2024. Having a full long-player of material ready to go 19 months later seemed like a tall order. That’s without accounting for an acclimation period for Zac Stephenson, a tour fill-in who became Sprints’ full-time guitarist. All the warning signs of an undercooked second album and finishing returns were present.
It turns out it was dead wrong to worry. All That Is Over is among 2025’s best albums by any measure, and it’s my personal favorite album of the year.
It’s smart, sharp and a little mean. Sprints wrung variety out of their chosen proto-goth, post-punk milieu, but they also managed to create a propulsive and cohesive listening experience. There’s a unifying tinge of darkness to every song, but All That Is Over is bursting with too much energy and too many ideas to fall into despondency. It rips on the omnipresence of rage in modern life, riffs extensively on a long-dead philosopher and includes echoes of other great Irish bands without being derivative. Chubb (vocal, lyrics and guitar), Stephenson (guitar), Sam McCann (bass and vocals), Jack Callan (drums), and unofficial fifth member Daniel Fox (producer) can take a bow and await their RTÉ Choice Music Prize shortlisting.2
While some level of regional recognition seems likely, stateside adulation has been in relatively short supply for both Sprints and All That Is Over. The album was widely well-reviewed at the time of its release, but that hasn’t translated to placement on year-end lists. The album has earned plaudits from rock-focused media,3 and it’s scraped the bottom 50 of some of the more contrarian or esoteric rankings, but it was passed over by Pitchfork, Stereogum, Aquarium Drunkard, Brooklyn Vegan, Paste, Gorilla vs. Bear, the Quietus, Drowned in Sound and any mainstream legacy media publication that eschews Associated Press copy to put together its own list.
All That Is Over’s aggregate rating, based on the 19 published reviews cataloged by Album of the Year, is 83. That makes it the 79th best-reviewed album released in 2025, and it’s an honorable mention on Album of the Year’s aggregate of year-end lists. That sounds pretty good. Comparison is the thief of joy and all, but it’s worth adding some context.
Wet Leg’s very good second album, Moisturizer, is sitting on an 82 based on 34 reviews. It’s the 131st best-reviewed album of the year. It’s currently No.17 on the aggregate list. Pulp’s good-enough comeback album, More, sits one spot lower on the aggregate list.4 The average of 34 reviews rates it 81 out of 100, good for the 140th best of the year. Things get weirder in non-rock genres.
Let God Sort Em Out, the mostly good comeback and reunion album from Clipse, is the highest rated hip-hop album on the list at No. 8.5 Its aggregate score based on 14 reviews is 81, good for 139th overall. That’s a whole helluva lot worse than No.14 on the list, Golliwog by billy woods. That album is the 13th best-reviewed LP of the year based on its aggregate score of 87 across a surprising 21 reviews. Lily Allen’s all-caps BREAKUP album, West End Girl, is an 80, based on 20 reviews.6 But with a spicy narrative in its sails, the 211th best-reviewed album of the year is 12th on the best-of amalgam. Addison Rae’s sort of eponymous, Addison, is probably the craziest blend of tepid reaction, review volume and list placement.7 Thanks to first-place placements from the Washington Post and Fader, it’s 13 on the list despite a 73 aggregate score based on 17 reviews. Oklou’s pulled off something similar with choke enough showing up seventh on the list with a 75 aggregate score, but French pop album was only nabbed six reviews upon release.8
Analysis shows that while there’s almost always some difference between contemporaneous reviews and year-end list placement,9 there is still a fairly pronounced level of disconnect between how much people liked Sprints’ album and how important they thought the album was a few months later. Those who didn’t stick to their guns are both cowardly and wrong.
It’s hard to say why Sprints got the old Joan Collins special from the criterati, but a few factors are working against the band.
The dramatic stakes and uncertainty established several hundred words ago in the lede aren’t common knowledge. Unless one is inclined to do the legwork to learn about Sprints, All That Is Over didn’t arrive prepackaged with much of a narrative. As a sophomore album, it automatically lacks the glow and out-of-nowhere cred that come with championing a debut. While it takes some risks, like mining the works of René Descartes for its lead single’s lyrics, it isn’t a radical departure from its predecessor. All That Is Over is louder, fuller and more polished and consistent than Letter to Self, but only by a little. A good hard-rock band making good hard-rock music lacks the pop of Fontaines D.C.’s hip-hop flirtation and shame’s dalliances with Brazilian folk music and country.10
To that point, the type of music Sprints do make was last in vogue at least 30 years ago, if it ever had much of a mainstream audience. Many of this year’s most ballyhooed albums are light and airy or imbued with a certain robotic removie. Aside from Geese, the rock albums that broke through largely followed one of two tracks. They embraced the twang of g-droppin’ vocals and pedal steel or veered toward Jim Steinman-style theatricality. Some, like the Last Dinner Party and Wolf Alice, managed to satisfy both impulses.11 All That Is Over offers none of that. Instead, it has the heavy, humid crackling-with-potential atmosphere of a tightly packed concert venue. Its sound takes inspiration from the likes of Nirvana, Siouxsie and the Banshees, My Bloody Valentine, Bauhaus, Surfer Rosa-era Pixies, the Dandy Warhols and Portishead. Post-apocalyptic video games and lauded Irish literature factor in, too. It’s a potent blend that winds up sounding a lot like a souped-up take on the spooky rock of the Gun Club’s first couple of albums, minus the problematic backwoods cosplay. It’s a musical niche that needs to be filled, but it could be difficult to place on a list of 10 or so albums. It’s not heavy enough to be the token metal pick, nor is it silly enough to divert adulation from bands like Lambrini Girls.12
No one does what Sprints does better than Sprints, but almost no one is trying to do what Sprints does.
It’s frustrating that an up-and-coming band that could probably use a little extra buzz fell off the radar — again — but it’s also easy to see who they ended up in year-end purgatory.
Everyone now knows that Sprints released the 79th best album of the year, but what the rest of this column presupposes is maybe they didn’t. Maybe they made the best album of 2025.
All That Is Over is a thrilling, no-skips masterclass in tension and release with brooding atmosphere to spare.
This is established within the album’s first two songs. Spare and ominous album-opener “Abandon,” with a water-drip drumbeat that sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a deep well, gives way to the delicate and considerably more energetic “To the Bone.” There are burbling signs of tension throughout that track’s first half that something more strident is coming, but the moment a geyser of sulfuric guitar bursts forth is a gleeful surprise on first listen. People prone to air guitar may find themselves involuntarily windmilling their dominant arm Pete Townshend-style when that hits.
All That Is Over’s charms are epitomized by “Something’s Gonna Happen,” which starts gloomy and moody with Chubb posing the loaded question, “Do you ever feel like something’s going to happen?” It’s a mantra she returns to a few times in the song’s opening verse, each time adding volume and intensity to her intonation. Each word twists a rubber band anchored to a toy propeller, adding more and more kinetic potential. By the time the chorus hits, thundering drums and howling guitar have sent the blade freely spinning. As seemingly every member of the band barks “Push, push, me, me hard/ Watch me, I’ll go far/ Push, push, me, me hard/ Watch me, I’ll go far,” the covetous melancholy that served as the song’s launchpad is a distant speck.
Album-closer “Desire,” which segues from a sort of surf-swept tango to a full-throttle all-hands-on-deck freak-out, comes close to matching the dynamicism, but “Something’s Gonna Happen” is about two minutes shorter, and that makes it hit harder.
Every second of All That Is Over is either the sound of a hissing fuse or the roar of active detonation. Even “Better,” an adorably fizzy shoegaze two-hander, finds a way to get even bigger and buzzier for its chorus.
In some ways, it’s a simple trick and a common enough one. Loud-quiet-loud is a memetic phrase for a reason. Every pregnant pause is going to be broken by thunderous percussion or guitar squall. However feverish a song feels, it can always burn a little hotter. Still, Sprints are currently the gold-standard at this type of songcraft, and in 2025, no other album was better at setting up limitations, then simply raging through them. In my opinion, no album was better. Full stop.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Ratcatcher – At points I wanted to shrug off this bleak extended look into the sun, but it’s not easy to shake off the way true misery porn tends to be. It’s willing to jump into the canal and wade through the trash to find humble, fleeting moments of humanity. And it drops in the extraordinary mouse on the moon sequence which might be the most lifelike experience in the whole thing – if moments like these can happen without warning, maybe the whole thing is worth it.
This intrigues me. I’d imagined this as “true misery porn” and had therefore never been in the mood for it, even though I trusted that it would be well-executed; hearing this makes me infinitely more likely to pick it up.
Fair warning: I never said it’s not miserable! But… there are glimpses.
Do. It’s like the baby of Tarkovsky and Ken Loach.
I managed to catch this before its U.S. theatrical release with Ramsey and Ken Loach in discussion. Frankly, the tension was intense, as it was clear that Ramsey was reaching for something more transcendental than the mere kitchen sink realism of the previous generation.
I Love Trouble – Not the dud with Nick Nolte but a postwar detective story. Franchot Tone is a private eye hired to investigate the past of an LA businessman, and of course he finds far more than expected. The mystery is a bit convoluted in the usual way of such tales, but satisfying. The cast is solid, especially Tone as a PI who, for the time is less cynical, more charming, and more snarky than usual. And if he seems oddly reminiscent of Jim Rockford, that would be because this was written by Roy Huggins, based on his novel. Huggins of course would go on to create a ton of TV, most notably Rockford (though he left that quickly), Maverick, and 77 Sunset Strip (which is actually a spinoff of this movie), and it’s clear from the start he is less interested in noir and more interested in witty dialogue. And also in detectives who are competent but tend to get beaten up a lot.
The Practice, “Show and Tell” – The retrial, and nothing else. I wondered how a repeat of the trial and the sixth and final week might be made interesting, and Kelley finds a way: a news crew has access to both Bobby and Richard, and around the trial we see them, the other lawyers, and even Judge Hiller interviewed. It adds some small zing, as does a shift in Richard’s strategy. Plus it gives us the last word to Hiller, who speaks for the viewer when she says she doesn’t know if the not guilty verdict was right. Had not mentioned Bruce Davison, who has played the accused these six weeks. He’s a solid actor, but is inconsistent trying to play someone who asserts his innocence while also having an ongoing mental health crisis. He’s strongest here, though.
Frasier, “The Return of Martin Crane” – A decade after being shot, Martin is ready to start working again and becomes a night watchman. But this brings back memories of how things were back then, of not getting along with the boys, of being shot. There is some humor along the edges, but this, like the scenes of Martin at the parole hearing for the shooter, doesn’t want to be funny, and does work very well.
Huggins also penned the crackerjack Lisbeth Scott noir TOO LATE FOR TEARS, creating the genre’s ultimate femme fatale.
And of course it’s on Tubi.
Throwing in some more appreciation for Too Late for Tears. Scott is such a white-hot phenomenon in that movie, an absolute femme fatale avatar.
Has anyone ever made a bad movie about unexpectedly acquiring a bag of money? Surely this is one of the great bulletproof premises.
more succession, s3e2. The writing really sings when they put everyone in crisis mode. You get some great business from Kendall here as he tries being both good cop and bad cop to shiv, flaming out with a feminist misogynist rant (
).
Also Ken looks like Bashar Assad, another nepobaby fail son.
The Kids In The Hall, Season Four, Episode Seventeen
“How are we going to keep these floors clean without you?”
“They’ll have to hire someone else.”
“Kyle, are these your children?”
“No.”
“Can an officer get worms from arresting a guy?”
“Brace yourself, Hank You’ve been sleeping for… twenty minutes.”
“But they’re nothing like the cars of twenty minutes ago!”
“Damn the decaf!”
“Now come to the grease pit.”
“The grease is important?”
“It is for me, Hank.”
“Let the flirting begin!”
Fantastic article, and I’ve immediately added this to my Tidal. Are you planning a year-end Sounding Board wrap-up for next week? I really liked the mid-year one.
Yes! Tentative plan is a ranked recap of everything from this year, plus a best of the rest capsule review section.
Heh, very curious because mine is coming out over the next two days and I imagine ours will be very different… mostly just because I more passively receive new music from my local indie public radio than I have time to actively seek it out. That said, I do see one song mentioned today that will show up in my top 60!
I’m excited to see it!
I tend to queue up whatever albums sound interesting and then plow through, which means I miss a lot of hyped stuff that doesn’t sound up my alley and singles that might permeate indie radio. An honest assessment of what’s good in that space is super helpful.
I suspect there won’t be much overlap with the Sounding Board rank/review.
I try to pick unlikely subjects for this space. Maybe the top five to 10 albums would have some business on a brave top 50 list (or my personal best-of list). I’d like to meet the maniac or Circa Waves superfan whose list does overlap with it though!
What’s interesting from my perspective, too, is how different my list is from a lot of publications I’ve looked at this year, as well. They’ve changed, I’ve changed, and music is so diffuse and there’s even less monoculture now than even twenty years ago or so. Like, in their heyday, 2003-5 or so, I learned a lot from Pitchfork and discovered a lot of my favorite music of the era there. Not all of it, but enough. I looked at their list this year, and if I recall correctly, their Top 100 songs had… five that overlapped with my list. (And, I think, four more that made my honorable mentions, which stretch to 100, plus several artists that had a different song picked by Pitchfork.) I’m not saying it would’ve been one-to-one back in the day, but if I did this in 2004*, I’d have expected at least 25%, and that might be conservative. This year, it’s 9%.
(* – I probably did do this in 2004, but I don’t know if I want to dig through the places that might be archived to find out.)