IngeniousPachyderm, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
When the Venn diagram of passion, friendship, identity, and artistry collide, it can feel as if fighting words are spitting from your veins. And as postmodern society crumbles, Die Spitz giddily bounce between a dozen different ways to push back. If the world of rock music were an ice cream shop, the Austin quartet have sampled each flavor, flipped the freezer over, and started dancing with the employees they helped unionize. On their debut album, Something to Consume (Released Sept 12 via Third Man Records), Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Eleanor Livingston, and Kate Halter fight against the inescapable consumption that surrounds life. “There’s a political side to it, but addiction and love can also be all-consuming,” Livingston says. And as the foursome trade off instruments, swapping songwriting and vocal duties, and generating powerful songwriting in concussive bursts, Die Spitz have created their own little pocket of the world where we can all stand on the edge together. That unity comes in part from the deep bonds between the 22-year-olds. All four are Austin natives, with Schrobilgen and Livingston having met in preschool, befriending Halter in middle school, and immediately bringing De St. Aubin into their inner circle when they formed the band in 2022. Though they’ve only been playing together a few years (not to mention Halter only learning to play bass to start the band), Something to Consume shows a maturity and technical prowess always wielded in service of their profound friendship. The group settled on the name Die Spitz over a “brown bag of Fireball”, opting for the feminine German definite article in place of the English. “It reminds me of the Grim Reaper spitting,” Livingston jokes. At their first live shows, they paired originals with covers from some of their inspirations: Black Sabbath, Pixies, Mudhoney, PJ Harvey, and Nirvana.
