Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: design of a decade, kittie, the year 2000
5. Kittie, Brackish
It’s hard to remember now, but nu-metal was horrible. I mean, we remember that it was horrible, but we forget how horribly frigging inescapable it was at the time. I understand in retrospect that the presence of Natalie Imbruglia and Robbie Williams on modern rock stations in the late nineties might had led some fans to get a little aggressive, but the movement led by bands like Limp BIzkit and followed by the likes of POD and Papa Roach and Drowning Pool was appallingly bad. So so so so awful.
As always, though, there were a couple of exceptions. Korn’s Got The Life, for instance, had a catchy melody and didn’t seem to take itself quite as seriously as the rest of that very earnest group’s catalog. Similarly, Alien Ant Farm’s 2001 Smooth Criminal cleverly took Michael Jackson’s dreadfully misogynist hit single and exposed it for what it was: shitty cock-rock.
With Brackish, Canadian quartet (?) Kittie made one of the genre’s only other remotely listenable hits. I won’t say that I only liked it because a girl sang it; indeed, the rest of Kittie’s output disappointed me to no end after I heard this song. But I will say that a feminine presence made me briefly re-evaluate the overly fratty sounds of the day.
Of course, it helps that Brackish is a fun song, and it’s an especially fun one to shout along with when you’re in the car and alone. Written by seventeen-year old singer Morgan Lander and guitarist Fallon Bowman, the song’s structure is an odd one: two-line verse, then the chorus (two lines with some screaming behind it), six-line verse with a different melody, another chorus, then a bridge that sounds oddly like a Luscious Jackson song, a sludgy breakdown, and a final repeat of the chorus. In a Salon article from the era (aka the era when people read Salon) Joey Sweeney wrote that Brackish “revels in a confounding game of low self-esteem, blame throwing and empty profanity that seems to be part and parcel of nü metal. The only thing separating Kittie from those girls that television host Maury Povich is always sending to boot camp is a record contract.”
I thought they went away shortly after, but a song called Funeral for Yesterday was on the lower rungs of the Billboard Modern Rock Chart as late as 2007. I can’t say I’m interested in hearing it, but for one brief moment Kittie were like the fun girls in the corner at the world’s worst frat party.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
