I'm not sensitive, you're sensitive

I’ve never been to Idaho. Well, that’s not completely true. Once, in high school, a few friends and I way overshot our drive to Eastern Washington and ended up in Coeur d’Alene. But if Bitch Fits is to be believed, there’s not much I’m missing out there (besides them).

Bitch Fits is one of the Nice House House Bands, another exclusive club consisting of bands that only played here in my basement for several shows in their infancy (the other members being The Flowers and, well, my band).

xoxo - Bitch Fits

On December 13, Bitch Fits had their baby; a five song EP about sending mail, being sensitive, mourning loved ones and lasting trauma. A careful mix of indie and emo, with just a dash of punk, xoxo already feels like a classic DIY release.

I’ve talked a lot about songwriting here already. Well, one out of the other two posts on the blog. I’ve been catching fragments of Frances’ lyrics through our blown monitors for what feels like a lifetime now, and I feel like I’m finally seeing the whole portrait after just catching glimpses. GO NELLIE!! tackles an emotion I don’t think anyone really handles well; Bitch Fits doesn’t just attempt to take on the loss of a grandparent, they chew it up, tie it into a cute little bow in their mouth, and spit it back out into your waiting palm. The track manages to feel joyous and mournful at the same time, capturing the contentment of Nel in the photograph, yet introspective when you realize that “I’m sensitive and I miss you so hard”

LMOTG is a song about sending letters away to your friends and expressing yourself better in every way but in-person. You can hear the punctuation in the first verse; the exclamation at the UPS man’s hairy legs, the smile after “whatta guy”; it’s all so sweet.

Not to mention, the delivery of “and I love to fly!” with the change-up on Steptoe Edwall gives me an adrenaline rush. But it’s so fleeting, not even a minute later we’re swept back into those clean, sweeping chords, and bass run of a lifetime (seriously, give the whole EP one listen through and check out every single one of those bass riffs). Here, Bitch Fits follows that old tried and true rule of writing punk: bring the nasty riff back, but slower. And slower they do, blowing that track to bits before putting it back together for one last verse in the last 40 seconds.

And so we come to Gums, a song I’ve been watching Frances perform pretty much since I met them a year and a half ago. Gums is tough. A haunting first-person ballad replete with all the violent imagery you could ask for, Gums is the empty triumph over an abuser, the residual emotional damage that floats above you for the rest of your life, and the two stab wounds you’ll remember forever.