hen I was in the fifth grade I got really into the card game Magic the Gathering, my friends and I were not the tetherball types and so we spent every recess sitting on the playground picnic benches playing, trading, and simply admiring our Magic cards. You don’t think about why you love things when you’re young but looking back it occurred to me that I found Magic cards at a time when I was feeling less confident about myself and unsure about where I fit in. Rather than walk the playground perimeter by myself humming the score to Star Wars I had a place to be and people who counted on me. Magic Cards were the size of a deck of playing cards and something I could easily shuttle between my mom and dad’s houses at a time when I was growing very tired of the weekly exchange. By the 7th grade I moved on from Magic cards on onto other things, they came into my life exactly when I needed them and though I still have my Black & White deck tucked safely away in a drawer, I don’t need them anymore.
When Kithkin was born from Ian McCutcheon, Kelton Sears, Bob Martin, and Alex Barr, they were just what the Pacific Northwest music scene needed, a compelling and original sound with a genuine love and interest for what it means to be from or live in the PNW. At the time local music was buckling under the weight of all the folk/folk-rock bands sprouting up out of the soil, Kithkin plugged their ears and did their own thing. People were just realizing that the Northwest was becoming really cool again, rents were on the rise but were still affordable, we were still a year or two away from realizing the impact of the great Amazon expansion, and no one had read that New York Magazine article about the earthquake that is going to consume everything west of I-5. Kithkin grew together, altering course and cutting their teeth at the Chop Suey, they learned how to play together and in some cases how to play at all. It seems as if Ian, Kelton, Bob, and Alex needed Kithkin, it provided an emotional and artistic outlet for the personal dramas playing out in each of their lives.
A few years ago the band was on the rise, multiple Seattle outlets listed them among the best new bands in the city, and while I’m not sure you could use the word famous to describe Kithkin, they certainly had a devoted fanbase. Their 2014 debut album Rituals, Trances & Ecstasies for Humans In Face of the Collapse was considered by many (including myself) to be one of the year’s best, and certainly the prime example of what it felt like to see Kithkin live. Memorial weekend hosted an intense scramble for the band to rush from their Sasquatch gig back up to Seattle for their album release at the Crocodile. A few tours under their belt and with some good word of mouth it seemed that Kithkin had what it takes to bring the eyes of the country to the Northwest in the same way The Head and the Heart had done a few years previous.
When I sat down with Ian and Kelton back in December of 2014 for our interview I was interested in this whole Cascadian Youth Tribe, this tree punk attitude and the nicknames the band members had gone by. I thought it was cool but I wondered to myself if that kind of schtick can really last. As the pair explained to me, the new material they were working on separated them a little bit from the nicknames and the imagery, in a sense they’d grown out of it. The Northwest and what it meant to live here was still vital to the band but they weren’t exactly kids screwing around on the stage anymore, they were artists, accomplished artists who took their craft seriously. As we talked about this some trigger was set off deep in the recesses of my brain, one I didn’t hear immediately, it was a warning that perhaps once Kithkin grew out of the clothes they’d worn they would also grow out of Kithkin. As I put it in my profile, the Lost Boys grew up. I assumed that this just meant the next stage in the evolution of Kithkin was beginning.
When I heard the news that the end times were near and that Kithkin would play their final show at the Chop Suey on September 3rd, I was just a few days removed from seeing the band perform a strangely laid back set for the South Lake Union Block Party. The energy was still there and they pounded and screamed and thwacked to their classics, but for their new songs there was something reserved about the band. Ian actually sat at the drum kit, Alex leaned back on an amplifier, perhaps it was just that these songs were new and the band had yet to understand how to live within them on stage, perhaps there was a slight emotional drain that the band knew that they’d soon be announcing their final show. It caught me off guard, sometimes you don’t hear much from a band for a while and there’s no new material and then on a late Monday morning the band announces that they’ve dissolved. Kithkin was still right in the thick of it with new and exciting material. Just like my Magic cards, the same cards that gave Kithkin their name, Kelton, Ian, Alex, and Bob seemed to outgrew Kithkin.
Kithkin spent so much of their artistic real estate on preparing for the end of times, whether that be some kind of apocalyptic climax to our world, global warming, or the simple inevitability of death. The song Socerer stems from multiple sources including a death and a divorce, two different kinds of ending. Rituals… included the tagline, “It is intended for questing, thrashing, and confronting the end of things.” Being someone who both resists change and fears the ending of things I felt a certain connection to the album and its themes, but now I’m wondering if the band properly prepared us for the end Kithkin. Unlike other bands where membership is somewhat fluid with members coming and going while the songs themselves remain the constant, Kithkin rested on its members. Without the contributions from each member the whole thing would fall apart. This is a band that recorded their album live, while standing in a circle feeding off one another, requiring each other to turn the crank that made Kithkin go.
I arrived at the Chop Suey early, really early hoping to get myself the best possible spot to witness the end of Kithkin, and I got an opportunity to see something I’d only ever really heard about. Kithkin was the kind of band that had a devoted and ravenous fanbase, the kind of fans who tattoo themselves, make special flags to fly, and mark up their jackets in appreciation for these four tree punks. It’s something I don’t recall seeing from a band in a long time, let alone a relatively small Seattle one. Grunge grew to prominence in the Pacific Northwest and eventually the world, because there was a group of discontented youth who were ignored outsiders with no one who spoke to or for them. It’s not total coincidence that as Grunge faded into Alternative the internet became a common fixture in American households and twenty years later it’s unlikely that we’ll see a movement like Grunge grow as naturally as it did, at least not for a while. But there is always room for these micro-movements where small selections of outside individuals will once again find a voice that speaks for them, and Kithkin had such a following. I’d never been to a Kithkin show per-say, the three previous times I’d seen the band they were performing at festivals (Bumbershoot, KEXP Summer Nights at the Mural, South Lake Union Block Party) so this was the first time I got a glimpse at a Kithkin centered audience, and I can’t even begin to tell you how beautiful its diversity was. Just lining the front of the stage there were a variety of ages, genders, races, and sexual orientation, you don’t get to see it that often and I just found it to be really beautiful, it spoke volumes about the passion people felt for this band and the comfort it gave them.
Waiting for the show to begin there was a moment of utter contempt I held for a portion of this beautiful crowd, as it seemed like every conversation I focused my ear to someone was name dropping, talking about the time they partied at Kelton’s house, or that they knew Ian in College, or that they hang out with Alex all the time, or that they did such and such with Bob. It was mildly annoying especially with one pair who was having a metaphorical pissing match over who seemed to know the band better and who knew the real reason why the band was calling it quits. As the night went on, it occurred to me that many people in this room actually knew this band, people who actually did go to college with them, or partied at their house, people who were devoted fans at the beginning when they were called Chinook Jargon and who remained loyal to them up to the point where they were wearing a Kithkin bandanna around their forehead at the final show. Kithkin played a very real role in the lives of their audience at times as artists and other times in real life. And then I started to feel like an intruder, sure I spent a couple hours at Kelton’s house with he and Ian for our interview, but I didn’t really know them, I didn’t even like the band the first time I heard them, not until I saw them at Bumbershoot did I become a devotee. But then I was a dedicated enough fan to grant lots and lots of digital space to the band, and here I was at the very front of the stage risking life and limb (or at least my thighs) to be right there as Kithkin closed out this chapter in their artistic lives. In its own way Kithkin also spoke for me, at a time when the arts are being squeezed from the city Kithkin wholeheartedly embraced this region I called home in a way that no one else was.
Look, Bod and Vox Mod both could have spouted wings and flown from the stage sprinkling us with fairy dust made from gold flakes and I still might have forgot their performances, Bod had moments of brilliance and Vox Mod was fun but when you’re followed by the display that Kithkin put on that night they were likely all you were going to remember. The band quite literally laid it all out on the stage, every ounce of music and artistic juice was sweat right through their skin. The Chop Suey is a small stage for the antics of Kithkin but that didn’t stop the band from leaping from the stage into the welcoming hands of the audience or lashing out at their instruments with all the primal aggression of a rabid animal. They played like a band confronting the end of the world, like every song they played was the last time they’d play that song, because it was. And the audience ate it all up, I ate it up, and by the end though my body begged for the show to end and the crushing of my body against the stage to cease, my heart bled for the music to continue on.
When Sorcerer came to its thundering conclusion and Kithkin enveloped each other in a sweaty embrace, the audience was left a speechless wet mess at the foot of the stage, the dust of the shattered earth settling all around us. There was a weird emptiness that filled the Chop Suey, Kithkin wasn’t just a great band, they weren’t just a band with a devoted fanbase, they were a deeply important band to the Pacific Northwest and hold a very special place in Northwest Music history. There has never been nor will there ever be a band as dedicated to understanding what it means to be from the Northwest and explore the sound of the mountains, the water, and trees. I fought against the temptation to treat this as a funeral, no one was actually dying, the members of Kithkin live on; Alex Barr is killing it with the gothic doom rock of KA, Ian McCutcheon plays drums for Bob Martin’s band, Bigfoot Wallace and His Wicked Sons which is about to be a pretty big thing, and Kelton Sears has been writing excellent articles for years with the Seattle Weekly and just recently became their music editor, these are all talented individuals who will be continuing to make excellent art, just somewhere else.
I came to the Kithkin party a little late, vaguely familiar with their music prior to Bumbershoot 2013, it wasn’t until that performance that everything clicked and I immediately understood this band and what they were doing. They quickly became one of my favorites, and when Rituals… was released I did something I rarely do, I sat down and listened to the whole thing from start to finish without stopping, my heart fluttering and my palms sweating understanding that I was hearing one of the best and most important recordings in Northwest music history. Din IV became my daughters song and she would insist I put it on so that we could run around the room flailing our arms. Kithkin meant a lot to me personally, there was something really direct and specific amidst all that chaos that found refreshing. I’m delaying the inevitable here, which is to stop writing about Kithkin, I thought I’d be doing it a lot longer and once I’ve finished this article I won’t be doing it again. I suppose there’s always hope that the new songs will somehow, someway find a path to get out there, until then I linger on the opportunity to tell the world about these amazing individuals and the music they make.
If you never got the chance to see Kithkin live I’m truly sorry, they were something to behold and the best I can offer to you is to give the song Fire Mumblers off Rituals… a listen, the way the song is drawn out with breaks and progressions is entirely what you got when you saw them live. The second best I can do for you is to check out the pictures I got from their final show, it was a unique experience for me as I was shooting with a lot of flash, and almost completely blind as the audience moved like a wave ebbing and flowing and the idea of actually looking through the viewfinder and framing a shot was laughable.
Long live Kithkin.
Click to view slideshow.And a set from Kithkin’s second to last show at the South Lake Union Block Party.
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