Review Summary: The only thing that makes me happy.
Sprain wrote music for pathetic people. While the Los Angeles based post-hardcore band constantly shifted styles through their three releases (two full-lengths and the present debut EP), they always maintained the throughline of Alexander Kent’s nihilistic tirading and self-effacing honesty. That this characteristic only became more unhinged and apparent with each release – culminating in 2023’s
The Lamb As Effigy, an album desperate to hate itself enough to become meaningful – certainly seems to have contributed to the eventual implosion of the band. As Kent and guitarist Silvie Simmons press onward as Shearling, the pieces of Sprain remain scattered in their wake, taunting what bystanders stumble upon them with their lost potential and worming their way into the psyche of the most megalomaniacal, wormlike and pathetic percentage of the contaminated.
On a first listen,
Sprain is immediately and obviously different from
The Lamb As Effigy, or even the debut,
As Lost Through Collision. At this point the band only consisted of April Gerloff (who, along with being an excellent bassist, was unceremoniously kicked from Sprain three weeks before the break-up) and Kent, and their musical identity reflects this limitation. Absent are the noise rock and post-hardcore influences, any Slint, Unwound or Oxbow aping, and, generally, Alex Kent’s tirades. Not that the themes of
Sprain aren’t still misanthropic and melancholic, but instead that their dark edge comes from the external instead of the internal, for the most part. Taking inspiration primarily from bands like Low and Bedhead,
Sprain is a brief, charming slowcore EP that only barely exceeds the runtime of later Sprain behemoths “Margin For Error” and “God, or Whatever You Call It”, yet finds the band playing with space and distance in much the same way they would throughout the rest of their career arc. Structured around two busier tracks, “Anything” and “Deliver Us”, the five-song EP begins, peaks and ends on a simple, dynamic songwriting identity that masterfully combines slowcore dearth with swelling instrumentals, rewarding patience and multiple listens.
Again, while most of the EP’s thematic identity comes from external melancholy – whether Alex and April are ruminating on putting down a dog (“True Norwegian Black Metal”) or grasping for words where they don't exist (“Anything”) –, album highlight “Deliver Us” offers a brief glimpse into Sprain’s nihilistic future. A stylistic outlier mixing clattering indie rock acoustic guitars with a screeching noise rock hook, a sound that reminds me of LCW-era Modest Mouse, Kent takes “Deliver Us” as the opportunity to present his most unhinged, self-loathing lyrics of the EP. Lines such as “My ego crushes all my good intentions” and “I do my part by not killing spiders” stick with the listener well after
Sprain has finished, lodging in the head to drag you back under again and again. Otherwise, the rest of the EP deflects to slowcore tropism. The bleak wasteland of “True Norwegian Black Metal” contrasts perfectly against the simple drum intro and catchy guitar riff of “Anything”, while “No One's Home” taunts the listener with perhaps the finest melody of the album, masterfully waiting to unleash it and leaving before the taste becomes anything less than thrilling. By the time “Snowing” swells into its final, triumphant crescendo, Sprain have left a remarkable impression with only twenty-six effortless minutes, crafting an impressive and compelling, if somewhat unoriginal, debut.
I must admit, nothing is ever at its best when Sprain are in my rotation. Their breed of experimental rock, whether indulging 90's slowcore, Slint worship, or descending into no wave noise rock hell, was, if awkward at times, captivating and monumental at its best – a grand musical canvas of self-loathing and dread for me to drown my own stupidity and delusion in.
Sprain was only the first piece of Sprain's story, but it is also certainly the most listenable and immediately accessible chapter; for those looking to dive into one of the most dynamic, entertaining and compelling rock bands of the last decade,
Sprain is the perfect introduction.
