Released: January 11, 2000
Kittie recorded Spit in nine days while its members were still fitting studio sessions around high school. Producer Garth Richardson captured a young band working mostly from instinct. That puts the album’s central question in plain view: can inexperience become an artistic advantage?
The title track shows what that inexperience sounds like. Its down-tuned riff is blunt, the rhythm keeps kicking forward, and Morgan Lander moves from a low growl to a cleaner voice with the transition left exposed. Each voice handles a different part of the song’s anger. One holds it in. The other lets it out.
“Charlotte” uses that contrast differently. Its quieter passages leave space around Lander’s voice before the guitars close in again. “Do You Think I’m a Whore?” slows the pace and uses a stripped-back riff to address judgment, appearance, and self-image. The title invited cheap assumptions, but the lyrics target people who decide who someone is before bothering to know them.
“Brackish” shows that Kittie already understood how contrasting parts could sharpen a song. The electronic beat beneath the opening riff gives the verse a nervous pulse, while the exchange between Lander and Fallon Bowman splits the chorus between two voices. The track nearly missed the album before its jungle-influenced programming and chorus came together in the studio. Those additions gave the song a clear identity inside Kittie’s heavier attack.
Across the album, Kittie repeat riffs, change direction suddenly, and occasionally let an idea run a little long. Some transitions land hard. Those rough joins also reveal how the band was writing: follow the emotion first and sort out the clean edges later. “Paperdoll” keeps returning to its bass-led groove, mirroring the fixation in the lyrics. The instrumental “Immortal” removes the confrontation altogether and ends the record on a colder, unresolved note.
The production leaves the performances exposed. The guitars are coarse instead of oversized, the drums still sound connected to the room, and the vocals haven’t been layered into an artificial wall. A few sections are awkward, but none of them sound calculated to impress a producer or fit a radio format. Kittie follow the arrangements they know, even when those arrangements bend in odd directions.
The band’s age and gender took over much of the discussion around Spit. Its music often became secondary to an argument over whether four teenage girls belonged in metal. Kittie respond inside the songs. They use the down-tuned riffs, stop-start grooves, and electronic touches common to late-’90s nu metal, then push them toward something harsher. Lander’s growls and Mercedes Lander’s drumming already point toward the heavier music Kittie would make on Oracle.
That doesn’t make Spit a fully developed version of what came later. Its value lies in hearing Kittie before that development took place. The band had enough control to turn anger into songs, but not enough experience to disguise the effort or make every section tidy.
So, can inexperience become an artistic advantage? On Spit, yes. It accounts for the awkward structures and exposed transitions, but it also keeps the anger raw and unpolished for adult approval. Kittie knew exactly what they were angry about, even while they were still learning what to do with it.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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