Kind of Like Spitting
Bridges Worth Burning
[Barsuk; 2002]
Rating: 6.0
Are you passionate? Ben Barnett is. Sometimes, he's too passionate for his own good, repelling the very
audience he's trying to communicate with. He even opens his latest album-- incredibly his seventh
full-length release in just three years-- with a song called "Passionate", wherein he exhorts over a
ferocious, feedback-laden rock backdrop, "Let's be passionate/ It's not like we'll get another chance to do
this/ Don't be embarrassed/ Go over the top/ But come up from the bottom."
I can't think of a more apt reference point for my experience with Kind of Like Spitting than those last
two lines there. My first exposure to the band came earlier this year, when I reviewed their self-titled
compilation of early songs. Virtually no moment on that record could really be considered over the top--
frankly, it just wasn't very good. Barnett certainly has come up from the bottom.
Helping him over the top are a cast of friends, some of whom you might recognize from Braid and Death Cab
for Cutie, who quickly seem to be attaining Indie Rock Mentor status in the Pacific Northwest. Death Cab's
Ben Gibbard is all over this thing, at the piano, behind the drum kit and the backup microphone, where his
even, skilled singing is very welcome as a foil to the frequently caterwauling Barnett. His songwriting
influence also appears to be lingering in the melodies that Barnett has cooked up here, which have only
become exponentially better since those early efforts I referred to before.
For his part, Barnett manages to vacillate between even, subdued singing and an overwrought wail that would
make Conor Oberst blush. The middle of the album is largely filled with the former, leaving the latter to
rough up the record's edges. "Following Days" is a mid-album highlight, with its propulsive backing (I had
no idea Gibbard could play the drums so well) and concise melody. When electrified, Barnett's guitar
generally has that lightly distorted tone that bands like Mineral and Sunny Day Real Estate used as their
stock-in-trade at the mid-90s height of emocore, and he squeezes a little feedback from it when he has to.
Things reach the height of bombast on "Crossover Potential", an old song that actually appears on the
self-titled release that came out earlier this year, albeit in a much more spineless form. Things rise
to a thundering climax as Barnett and no fewer than nine accomplices shout out the chorus, peaking on the
line "the average woe has no crossover potential" in a display of pained mass catharsis. It's one of
several instances where things get just a bit too over the top.
Oddly, I think my favorite track is the last one, "Untitled". Hardly clocking in at fifty seconds, it's a
quiet acoustic number whose brevity, sprightly guitar work, and close Barnett/Gibbard harmonies render it
endearing in almost the same way that "Her Majesty" seemed a strangely fitting end for Abbey Road.
Overall, Kind of Like Spitting have scraped together a pretty decent little rock record that occasionally
veers a little too far into overblown emo territory for my tastes. It's not going to change the world or
anything, but it sure is passionate.
-Joe Tangari, October 11th, 2002