Die Spitz’s Anarchic Fun Can’t be Contained

This snarling, genre-mashing Austin quartet are the most exciting new rock band on the planet, and they’re doing everything their way

llie Livingston leans on the glass frontage of an almost empty laundromat. Washed out by the half-alive glow of neon strip lights, she sparks a cigarette and slips on a pair of earphones. Then, she picks up her sword and heads inside. The opening seconds of the video for Die Spitz’s ‘Throw Yourself To The Sword’ tell you almost everything you need to know about this furiously exciting, genre-mashing Austin band – they’re here to break apart the stultifying air of your day-to-day, and they’ll do it their way.

The only thing bigger than the guitarist and vocalist’s weapon in the clip is the song’s riff – a full-bore sludge-fest driven on by ruthlessly efficient drums and her sandpaper scream. In this moment, Die Spitz are a killer metal band, but they don’t stay in any one lane for long. “You can go through life making yourself out to be a person who can be fantastical and do something amazing,” she says. “If you’re working as a server, which I’ve done for a long time, if you’re in school, if you’re whatever, you can rise against it as long as you’re willing to let yourself try.”

Reflecting that belief, their debut album ‘Something To Consume’ darts between styles with brutish energy and a sense of anarchic fun. At times, it feels like you’re a teenager discovering synapse-fizzing sounds all over again as they pinwheel between punk, shoegaze and classic rock. “It was important to showcase a little bit of everything that we want to do moving forward,” bassist Kate Halter says. “And to have the freedom of doing whatever the fuck we want, basically.”

“I love to feel a wave of emotions, not one thing – that’s really important to the direction of this band” – Ellie Livingston

Their sound is not one person trying on different hats, desperately trying to impress you by listing how many records they own. Instead, it’s an example of genuine buy-in and enthusiasm by the quartet – all four songwriters in their own right, and three of them vocalists – when confronted with another person’s creative mores.

In the run-up to ‘Throw Yourself To The Sword’ on the LP’s tracklist, Ava Schrobilgen fronts the appropriately titled, Basement-meets-Gits rager ‘Pop Punk Anthem (Sorry for the Delay)’ and Chloe De St. Aubin leads the windingly melodic, almost Violent Femmes-y indie-rock of ‘Voir Dire’. As well as singing, both have a roving role in the band, switching between guitar and drums when required, spinning plates in a maelstrom. “We didn’t think it would work out this well with all these different sounds,” Schrobilgen says. “But we bring the songs to each other, and we have the freedom of creativity from everybody. Rather than Chloe’s song or Ellie’s song, it’s a Die Spitz song.”

‘Something To Consume’ also hangs together better than it ever should because of the bone-deep chemistry between the quartet. On the surging ‘Red 40’ and ‘Riding With My Girls’, their camaraderie seems impenetrable, like being confronted with a collective ‘fuck you’ from a bunch of people in their bulletproof early-twenties. It’s also deeply aspirational. You want to be a part of their team, headbanging at the lip of the stage as Livingston stomps a fuzz pedal half to death with a red cowboy boot. “I think that’s the foundation of friendship underneath our band – the collaboration that comes from that closeness,” Schrobilgen adds.

The roots of that friendship run deep. Halter, Livingston and Schrobilgen have been tight since they were kids, and began playing music together in what would become Die Spitz when Covid ran roughshod over the usual avenues teenagers have to spend time together. In a recent interview with the Line of Best Fit, they described De St. Aubin’s introduction almost in terms of pulling someone in from a life lived in parallel — different schools but the same town, same obsessions. “I think we all have similar moral compasses, similar ways of viewing life,” Livingston observes now.

Austin’s radical edge – the one that powered venues like Raul’s and bands such as Dicks and Big Boys back when punk was a brand new, malleable idea – might have been sanded down over the years, but the city that gave Die Spitz a leg up is still young and vibrant. A music hive with the air of a small town, its scene complements the quartet’s own magpie approach to sonics by throwing up everything from the febrile power-pop of Gus Baldwin And The Sketch to Portrayal Of Guilt’s gnarly hardcore and Being Dead’s effervescently odd indie-rock. “It’s a great place to start a band,” Halter says. “Music is such a big thing, but it’s not oversaturated.”

“There’s a very small scene of people our age, born and raised here, who are all in each other’s bands,” Schrobilgen observes. “We call it bandcest. They would play college parties, and we would go when we were in high school. We would see these people, these guys, playing, and we’d be like, ‘We should do that.’ That was a big inspiration. It’s funny, we thought they were the coolest people in the world, and now they’re like… meh. But there are a lot of really cool bands coming out of Austin – it was very inspiring growing up here and seeing live music at all points of your life. It’s almost like our parents were like, ‘You’re gonna be in a band… you’re gonna be in a band.’”

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