An Open Letter to Karla Chubb of Sprints

Is Ireland "full", or isn't it?

The other night I went to see the Pixies perform in Dublin. On support was a local band named Sprints, whose music I was vaguely aware of prior, but who I would hardly call myself a fan of. Their set did not make a convert of me: they’re competent performers, but I must confess that the recent micro-genre of “noisy post-punk with talky vocals” never really did anything for me, and even people who like that style of music must surely admit that the scene is becoming awfully saturated. When the live feed on the screens on either side of the stage occasionally cut to footage of the audience, I can’t say that many of them looked much more enthused about the band’s performance than I felt.

But what really annoyed me was when the lead singer, Karla Chubb, took the opportunity near the end of the band’s set to climb atop her soapbox and go off on a little spiel about her band and their place in the political conversation. It’s bad enough when the headliners pull this shit, but even more obnoxious when support acts do. I didn’t write down the full text of the speech but made some notes on my phone; what follows is not the verbatim text but the general gist as I recall it:

We started this band as just four friends who didn’t really know what we were doing, and it’s taken us all over the world, across America and Europe. So start a band, support each other. If we can do it, anybody can!

Truthfully - is there any emotional state more unappealing to an outside observer than false modesty? If Chubb had said nothing about how successful her band was, that would’ve been fine; if she’d said that she was delighted to have been given the opportunity to tour around the world and very proud of everything her band had accomplished, that would’ve also been fine. But attempting to covertly flex on how successful her band was by couching it in a self-deprecating humblebrag - ugh, I think I may have literally retched on the spot. Ms. Chubb, I would strongly advise you to take this specific passage out of your speeches going forward. I can assure you that no one, literally no one, is fooled.

Moving on:

But with this platform comes a responsibility, a responsibility to use your platform for good.

At this point of the show I was thinking “3, 2, 1, Palestine”.

To speak out against the ongoing genocide in Palestine, as we and several other acts did in SXSW this year.

I heard about this at the time. Granted, I don’t really understand what these bands travelling all the way to Texas and then sitting on their hands during their allotted timeslots was intended to accomplish with regards to the conflict in Gaza (if anything), but I suppose it’s the thought that counts.

To speak out against the rise of the far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment. Ireland’s not full - we’re a nation of immigrants.

This is the point where Chubb really lost me. First of all: it’s plainly untrue that Ireland is a “nation of immigrants”. Per the 2022 census, of the 5.1 million people living in Ireland, 4.1 million (or 80%) were born in Ireland. According to the 2016 census, 82.2% of the population at the time identified themselves as “White Irish”, of which 94.1% indicated that they were born in Ireland. An additional 0.7% identified themselves as Irish Travellers. The total population of non-Irish nationals living in Ireland was 535,475, or a mere 11% of the population at the time. A mere 104,784 people in Ireland had dual Irish citizenship at the time.¹

So you have a country in which a) four-fifths of people who live here were born here, b) four-fifths of people who live here identify as a member of one of the two ethnic groups most closely associated with the Irish people, and c) the number of non-nationals resident in the country was just over 10%. In what meaningful sense of the term is this country a “nation of immigrants”? Certainly it’s a nation with immigrants, but it’s not a nation of immigrants.

I presume that Ms. Chubb only arrived at the misconception that Ireland is “a nation of immigrants” because, like most urban creatives of her generation, she thinks she lives in the US, and has heard the phrase “America is a nation of immigrants” so many times that she simply assumed the same was true of Ireland without bothering to take the time to check.

But it’s the other factual assertion made in the passage above which confused me: “Ireland’s not full” (and while I’ve been paraphrasing her speech so far, I am 100% confident she used that exact three-word phrase). In an interview with Stereogum published just ten months ago, Chubb herself stated:

“That rise of punk and post-punk in Dublin is very much inspired by how angry people are and how shit it’s getting,” Chubb says. “Every time it gets bad you’re like, ‘It couldn’t possibly get worse,’ and it still does. People are really fed up with the housing crisis, the homelessness crisis, students being squeezed out.”

Like many Irish people of her generation, Ms. Chubb is exasperated with the shortage of accommodation in the country. I’m not here to debate whether or not this shortage (which is undeniably real) warrants the rather dramatic term “crisis”. I simply want to ask the obvious question: if there’s an ongoing housing crisis in Ireland, how can it also be the case that Ireland isn’t full? If there is insufficient accommodation in Ireland to meet the demand even for the people already resident here (as Ms. Chubb very much seems to believe), how can it possibly be the case that Ireland isn’t full? To put it another way, if “full” doesn’t mean “demand for accommodation in this country is vastly in excess of supply” - what on earth does it mean?²

It’s so arrogant, the presumption that just because I like a band enough to come to one of their gigs that I therefore have even the slightest interest in hearing about their political opinions (and Ms. Chubb couldn’t even assume that the people in the audience came to see her band in addition to coming to see Pixies, as they weren’t even listed as the support act on any of the posters). There is literally no relationship between those things: many great musicians support political causes and hold political opinions that I don’t, and vice versa. Musicians have no more of a responsibility to use their platform for social good than plumbers do when they come to your house to mend the shower.

It seems to be a quintessentially Millennial and Gen Z thing, this assumption among musicians that they have a social responsibility to be activists in addition to being songwriters and performers. It’s rather telling that the headline act Sprints were there to support, Pixies, didn’t do anything like this: no soapboxing about their political opinions; no false modesty; no urging the crowd to start a moshpit (as Ms. Chubb did during her band’s set; the audience politely but firmly declined); no weak attempts at stage banter; not even a “thank you Dublin, you’ve been great”. They came onstage, played their set, and left. And that’s the way I like it, frankly. I go to rock concerts to be entertained, not to be lectured and lied to.

1. The equivalent figures for the 2022 census have not yet been published. When the figures are published, if it’s determined that, in the span of six years, Ireland’s population profile changed so dramatically that more than 50% of people were not born here and/or more than 50% of people do not describe themselves as “White Irish”, I pledge to retract this article and issue Ms. Chubb a public apology. I’ll also eat my hat while I’m at it.

2. After the “Ireland’s not full” bit, Ms. Chubb said a few words in support of trans people, who “go through so much shit every day” or something to that effect.