Start Listening To: SPITTING IMAGE
Discover the creative depths of SPITTING IMAGE.
SPITTING IMAGE is an impressive collective hailing from Reno, Nevada that brings together the sounds of unhinged hardcore, Kraut Motorik, Laurel Canyon, angular post-punk and beyond. Since their formation, the band has released several 7” and cassette EPs, plus the 2019 This Not This EP and tour. They've also performed alongside the likes of Iceage, Ceremony, Sheer Mag, Moaning, Spiritual Cramp, Surf Curse, and Fearing. Now, SPITTING IMAGE are about to unleash their new full-length LP, Full Sun, produced by Tim Green of Nation of Ulysses and The Fucking Champs fame at Louder Studios in Grass Valley, California.
Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from, and something about the music you make?
We’re Spitting Image, a psych-punk four-piece formed in Reno, Nevada, in 2012. Our music could broadly be categorized as punk but incorporates elements of hardcore, psychedelic rock, post-punk, krautrock, folk, etc. We’re music lovers in the broadest sense, and our sound reflects that.
How does the creative process work within the band?
Generally, our guitarist, Julian [Jacobs], brings ideas to practice– a central guitar riff or a bassline, maybe a rough sketch of a drumbeat. From there, we play off those ideas until they start sounding right, just jamming until things click into place. Playing with vocal cadence and delivery is part of this process, but lyrics typically come later.
How does it feel to be releasing a debut album after being in a band together since 2012?
It feels like a huge relief. It’s easy for us to trip on the ten-year timeline, but there were more than four years when we were all living in separate states. The record was written within a year of everyone’s return to Nevada. The recording was delayed by a year due to COVID and took half a year to complete. Here we are releasing the finished product another year later, during which time we’ve continued writing, playing shows, and working with visual artists on album art and music videos. In reality, we put out two 7-inches and three tapes in four years, took a long geographic hiatus to work on school, painting, photography, etc., then put out another tape and wrote a full-length within a year of regrouping, making Full Sun our seventh release. The record feels long overdue, but we definitely haven’t been sitting on our asses.
How has your sound evolved since you first started out?
Our music definitely has more immediacy and feels less overthought. Our earliest stuff, a lot of which isn’t recorded, was much more jarring and discordant. We were never trying for a particular sound– that’s just where we were as musicians and songwriters. Since then, we have preferred to let things flow a little more organically– less focus on complex rhythm and harmony and more on the overall feel of the music. We’re also a lot more comfortable exploring the full breadth of our influences without much concern for how to categorize them.
What inspired you to write your debut?
Awareness of death and life– obligation and responsibility to consciously participate with the universal web of meaning. Describing a time, a place, and leaving trail markers behind for the next ones, along with honoring and recognizing those before us.
How do you produce your music?
Before we went into the studio, we spent a lot of time thinking about arrangements– which songs needed synths or tambourine or shaker, which kinds of guitar textures we wanted in our overdubs, vocal effects, etc. Base tracks were recorded with Tim Green (Nation of Ulysses, The Fucking Champs) at his studio in Grass Valley, CA. Many of the overdubs were recorded with the help of our good friend Morgan Travis in Los Angeles. Those recordings were brought back to Tim’s studio and assembled into the final product you hear on the album.
What’s it like working with Slovenly Recordings?
Slovenly has been great. We’ve known Pete [Menchetti], the founder of Slovenly, for years and played a couple of the festivals he’s thrown in Reno [DEBAUCH-A-RENO], where the label was first founded. We’re the first Reno band to release an album on Slovenly and couldn’t be more hyped.
What has been your most memorable live performance?
We had the pleasure of opening for our old friends Surf Curse at Fonda Theatre in 2019. It was surreal playing in a room that holds 1,200 people, but it was so much fun.
What has been the most difficult challenge you have faced as a band?
Being a band, being poor, keeping on keeping on.
Name an artist you’re still listening to from when you were younger?
Thin Lizzy, Cro Mags, E-40, Jesus and Mary Chain, Roky Erickson, Lee Perry
What do you love right now?
Punk music, new age beverages
What do you hate right now?
The Internet.
Are there any other releases you’re looking forward to in 2023?
U.S. Girls, Milk Music, The Men
