Die Spitz: The Best of What’s Next

In a city as creatively fertile as Austin, winning Album of the Year at the local music awards is a coveted feat. So when Die Spitz, the brainchild of rule-breaking, foul-mouthed twenty-somethings Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Eleanor Livingston, and Kate Halter, took home the prize in 2024 for Teeth, beating out the likes of Being Dead, Tele Novella, BLK ODYSSY, and Nemegata, it felt like a comfirmation: A younger crop of musicians was going to shape Austin’s multi-generational musical identity and scenes for many years to come. But what nobody mentions, however, is that Teeth was not just an EP, but a batch of seven tracks that could hang with whatever Black Pumas or Fuck Money were putting out. “Hair of Dog,” “My Hot Piss,” and “i hate when GIRLS die” are all one-of-one, no-fuss, terrifically modern punk classics.

“What if, for this one, they’re like, ‘Eh, it’s too long,’” Schrobilgen jokes, referring to Die Spitz’s debut full-length, the brand-new and obliterating Something to Consume. But history says otherwise, as the band has won seven awards in three years. And Die Spitz recognize that praise, for better or for worse. “This city supports us with everything they have,” Schrobilgen goes on, before pausing. “We also have our biggest haters here. It’s very interesting going to the grocery store sometimes.” The band doesn’t indulge me on what those encounters are like, aside from receiving some “stank looks” from their high school classmates.

Schrobilgen and Livingston, the two guitarist/vocalists who comprise Die Spitz’s thrashing binary, knew each other first, meeting in ballet class when they were three years old and performing “‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ or something” together. Livingston says she’s always looked up to Schrobilgen, because she would “dress in Target boys clothes.” “I was like, ‘That’s so fire,’” she remembers. “And now, I still hold that admiration for her, but watching her play and write music.” The duo went to the same elementary school and took the same music classes. “[Eleanor] sang really well and she got to go on stage to do ‘The Clam Dance,’” Schrobilgen recalls. “I was really sad, because she got to go on the stage for ‘The Clam Dance’ and I didn’t. But I pretended to not care. I was a slacker even in kindergarten.”

Eventually, Livingston’s dad introduced Schrobilgen to Black Sabbath’s music, and when Livingston, they’d drive around, smoke a lot of weed, and listen to the Grateful Dead. Halter, who befriended Schrobilgen and Livingston in middle school, was in the picture by this point, too. “The three of us had a huge Grateful Dead era,” Livingston says. “I don’t know how that translates at all, but it’s weird.” You’re certainly not going to hear much Jerry Garcia in Die Spitz. But Halter did learn how to play bass so she could be in the band. In her past, she “dabbled in violin” before Schrobilgen and Livingston, in their own words, “made her learn the bass.” “She had no choice,” Schrobilgen laughs. There are some whispers in the chat of Halter learning to play accordion for a future “vamp-anthem, Davy Jones-esque” Die Spitz song, but I wouldn’t take the band at their word on that.

De St. Aubin, who didn’t save a Grateful Dead song onto her phone until a year ago, went to a different high school but knew of the girls through Instagram. “Sitting in chemistry, I heard [their music] and was like, ‘Oh, my God, they’re so hot. I was in love with all of them,” she says. “I remember wishing I would be their friend one day… and then I forgot.” Three years ago, her friend—and former bandmate—Molly Masson, the vocalist in Farmer’s Wife (FKA Sludge), heard that Die Spitz were looking to add a new member. “She was like, ‘Oh, my friends Die Spitz need a drummer.’ And I was like, ‘No fucking way!’ But then I also forgot that happened, because I hadn’t heard from them in a few weeks. Then I got a call from the Boogeyman, like forty missed calls. I kept declining them, because I was scared in my house alone. And it was Ellie calling me. They had COVID and said, ‘Can you still practice?’”

A crucial detail in all of this is that Livingston’s screen name for her outgoing calls was “The Boogeyman.” When she started Die Spitz, she didn’t want anyone to know her actual name. “I thought that’d be really awesome and mysterious,” she admits, chuckling. “But then it fucked us over. Now every article is wrong. I won’t get credit for doing something.” There was one show in particular where a flu-addled Livingston’s antics, climbing the rafters at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in a feverish delirium, was credited to Halter. “I was like, ‘Fuck my life, I tried so hard to put on a show!’” she howls. “But that’s actually, like, totally my fault.” None of the other band members had pseudonyms like Livingston, but Schrobilgen has aspirations of going by the name “White Chedda.” Before they called themselves Die Spitz, which is German for “the pointed,” the girls thought about calling themselves Pig Pen, which Livingston swears chef/actor Matty Matheson “stole from her brain.” De St. Aubin says she didn’t like The Bear. “Industry words!” Schrobilgen belts out.

CHECK ANY DIE SPITZ BIO online and you’ll probably encounter some sort of anecdote about the foursome watching the Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt and deciding to “start a band after a late-night viewing” of it. Funnily enough, the entire band hates that movie and calls Mötley Crüe “the worst kind of people.” “It’s really fucking embarrassing,” Livingston says. “I don’t want that to be our origin story.” So, in an effort to clear the air and wipe the slate clean, I ask the band for their real origin story. “We’re all sisters,” Halter declares, to which Livingston expands, “We’re all sisters born from Keith Morris [of Black Flag] and my hot mom.” Apparently, at a merch table during South by Southwest, this was a point of controversy. “Some guy randomly came up to my mom at the merch table and was like, ‘Hey, you know Die Spitz?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’m a big fan of them, but my sister’s not, because they’re, like, nepo babies. I heard that Keith Morris is their dad.’” Schrobilgen argues that what’s especially great about that story is: Livingston and her mom look so much alike that “you’d have to be an idiot” to ask if she knows who Die Spitz is.

Since releasing the Revenge of Evangeline EP in November 2022, Die Spitz has established itself as one of the best live acts in Austin, playing gigs with bands like Sleater-Kinney and Amyl & The Sniffers, to name a few. But Livingston is quick to note that their first shows were “really fucking bad.” Halter concurs, “We were playing badly. We were disrespecting the establishment. I’m surprised they let us back now. We were such assholes.” Despite their urges to rewrite their own history, Die Spitz’s beginnings weren’t a total antithesis of Mötley Crüe. Halter would wear a trench coat with “a handle of Tito’s and cranberry juice” tied up to look like “she had two giant tits,” and the whole band would get shit-faced in venue bathrooms, because they were rarely allowed in green rooms as teenagers. They were granted green room access one time, and Livingston reveals that she used it as an opportunity to get incredibly “fucked up,” much to the immediate regret of the in-house staff. “I will say,” Halter adds, “getting all of that out of the way while we were playing like shit and playing for fun and getting all the belligerence out of the way has been really good for our career, so the British people are doing it right.” Now, Livingston gestures, they all just read books and geek out about nature backstage.

The characters who show up to Die Spitz shows are vast: young girls, frat guys, old men “that come to the very front” of the pit. The latter aren’t necessarily the “arms-crossed, standing still” type like most show-going men of a certain flavor. Instead, “it’s these fucking old men, and they come so early,” Livingston explains. “And they stand there and get their phones out just to film the whole set with a frown on their face.” Schrobilgen wonders if a majority of them have “creepy intentions,” because they’re smiling and taking pictures of Livingston’s chest, though Livingston clarifies that that’s not the case for everyone. “We have some kick-ass old-dude fans who are like, ‘This is like seeing Nirvana for the first time!’ They’re sick.” The band hopes that, at the very least, Something to Consume will cast some of those dudes away and bring in more folks that they want to play for—folks who are closer to their age.