“Morgan has the actives, and I use Grandpa’s guitar. That defines Kittie’s tone”: The nine lives of Morgan Lander and Tara McLeod – and how swapping ’00s-era Hamers for a Solar V helped supercharge their revival
Returning with their first album in 13 years, Lander and McLeod discuss their tone chemistry and explain why you can shove them through the meat grinder but you'll never keep them down
(Image credit: Dante Dellamore)
As you’d hope from something called Fire, Kittie’s first album in 13 years is incendiary. The Canadian metal quartet’s unflinchingly heavy return, however, wasn’t an inevitability.
Guitarists Morgan Lander and Tara McLeod explain that making new music was “not on their bingo card” when the band regrouped in 2022 for a few festival appearances, preferring to think of the sets as more of a “final lap” than a new beginning.
But drilling into old favorites – whether it be the nu-flavored teenage slams of 1999’s Spit, or the more venomously groove-thrashed tunes of their late-’00s period – revealed that despite not having raged together in years, there was something undeniably special about Kittie’s musical connection.
“Playing with these girls is like putting on an old pair of pants,” Lander says. “It’s very comfortable – and it looks good, too.”
Though McLeod had recently been running country licks with Calgary’s Nice Horse, she tapped back into a fiercely feral feel by the time Kittie hit Nashville’s Sienna Studios with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Code Orange).
Straight out of the gate, Fire’s opening title track is ablaze with Lander’s percussively nasty riffage, while McLeod’s big, flame-broiled bends triumphantly rise from the ashes ahead of the rest of a note-scorched solo.
KITTIE - One Foot In The Grave (Official Music Video) - YouTube
“I know it is cliché to say, but it does very much feel like a ‘phoenix rising’ type of situation,” Lander says of the allusion. “Fire can destroy. It can create. It’s cleansing. It allows for a clean slate, or to be reborn again. All of those things are parallel with the things we’re experiencing right now.”
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That clean slate likewise led Lander to eschew her ’00s-era Hamers for a Solar V that gave Kittie the ultra-modern bite of Fishman active pickups, though McLeod kept her kit traditional with a passively chunky Les Paul. “We’ve always had that blend,” McLeod says of their tandem aesthetic. “Morgan has the [actives], and then I use grandpa’s guitar. That defines Kittie’s tone.”
Fire ultimately finds Kittie refreshed, and in fighting shape. The anthemically slammed-down I Still Wear the Crown becomes a mission statement for a group that’s faced many challenges – from the lengthy hiatus, to the death of longtime bassist Trish Doan in 2017 – but perseveres on its own proudly defiant terms. As Lander howls it: “Face down, hands pressed to the ground, yet I’m unbroken.”
“It’s a reminder to yourself that no matter what bullshit you go through – no matter the trials – you still have power,” Lander says of remaining the “master of your domain”.
“We like to joke that we’ve really been sent through the meat grinder,” McLeod adds. “[Adversity] didn’t take us down for good… but we definitely had our faces in the mud for a while.
Gregory Adams is a Vancouver-based arts reporter. From metal legends to emerging pop icons to the best of the basement circuit, he’s interviewed musicians across countless genres for nearly two decades, most recently with Guitar World, Bass Player, Revolver, and more – as well as through his independent newsletter, Gut Feeling. This all still blows his mind. He’s a guitar player, generally bouncing hardcore riffs off his ’52 Tele reissue and a dinged-up SG.
