The danger of listening to a debut album too many times might be starting to mistake repetition for revelation. What didn’t land on a first spin ends up worming its way through sheer exposure, until you’re either in love or in a weird sonic Stockholm syndrome. Something To Consume, the debut from Austin’s quartet Die Spitz, thrives on this uneasy tension: it is immediate and abrasive, but also sticky enough to wedge itself in one’s head long after the distortion fades. Released via Jack White’s Third Man Records, the album arrives as a bold declaration that insists on outright surrender.
Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston, and Kate Halter are part of a generation that came of age in the shadows of endless consumption. Their songs gnash their teeth at that reality, the band trading instruments and vocals with abandon and a refusal to be contained in a singular genre box that mirrors the album’s restless themes. What emerges is a somewhat slippery and kaleidoscopic sound, chewing from punk, doom, grunge and shoegaze, but not sitting comfortably inside any of them. Something To Consume shifts tones, colours, and levels of intensity without losing momentum and it’s underpinned by cohesion as well as the sense that each track is part of a larger, unruly organism.
Opener ‘Pop Punk Anthem (Sorry for the Delay)’ delivers overwhelmingly catchy hooks that are immediately complicated by an undercurrent of tension. ‘Throw Yourself to the Sword’ then doubles as a call to arms and an assertion of identity. Nirvana’s volatility and Sabbath’s weight are bent through lyrics about obsession and strength, tempered by vulnerability. It’s perhaps one of the first hints that Die Spitz’s boldness isn’t much about posturing as it is about surviving.
‘American Porn’ interrogates exploitation with irony, Schrobilgen’s raspy delivery exposing the workings of performance, control, and beauty. It is compelling and uncomfortable, the band’s signature ripping instrumentation and lyrics pointing the finger at the commodification of bodies and identity. ‘Sound to No One’ feels like a shoegazey meditation on longing, with Livingston’s vocals suspended over a bassline that refuses release. Further on, ‘Red40’ detonates mid-album with grunge’s raw honesty. Here, imagery of compulsion, repetition, and sickness feels uncomfortably familiar in times where simply coping is marketed as a branded commodity. ‘RIDING WITH MY GIRLS’ then comes a burst of magnetic rock ‘n’ roll energy, full of youthful camaraderie and recklessness. It captures the exhilaration of hitting the open road with friends while also serving as a thematic breather in the album’s otherwise intense landscape.
Something To Consume feels like a record about the paradox of modern freedom: the way choice often suffocates, desire can cage, and accumulation eats at the self until we wonder what is left. Die Spitz harnesses the unease, working it into something electric, into an album that restores punk’s legacy for the present. In a cultural landscape where this kind of music is time and again recycled as an aesthetic, four 22-year-olds from Texas make it feel urgent again.
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