Before I start talking about the Baltimore-based power pop band known as Splitsville, I should let them start talking…and I’ll do so by offering up the very first track from their very first album, which provided at least as good an intro to the group as anything I could compose:
I’ve had a relationship with Brandt and Matt Huseman, the brothers who were 2/3 of the founding members of Splitsville, since before there even was a Splitsville. If you’re a power pop geek like myself, you already know that the Huseman boys made up half of The Greenberry Woods, whose exploits will be further discussed in a future column…but, for the record, if you don’t own their two albums, Rapple Dapple and Big Money Item, then your collection is all the poorer for their absence. Anyway, I was such a fan of The Greenberry Woods that I’m pretty sure I caught every performance they ever did in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (including a show which remains the most bizarre double bill I’ve ever personally witnessed, where they opened for Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine), so when the group broke up, I was always going to follow its members wherever they went.
I spent years waiting for Ira Katz to release something by his subsequent band, Lovefool, but I don’t think they ever actually committed anything to disc. Fortunately, the Husemans have released quite a few albums as part of Splitsville…so many, in fact, that they’ve warranted a best-of collection called Let’s Go, after its opening track.
As it happens, “Let’s Go” was also the opening track of Ultrasound, the band’s second album. Unfortunately, the band’s first album, Splitsville U.S.A., isn’t represented on this disc (the reason why will be revealed later), but this song is such a perfect call to arms for the collection that it’s hard to argue against it as a perfect starting point. The musical callback to The Knack’s “My Sharona” says, “Yeah, we’re power pop,” and, indeed, that’s certainly a valid description for a certain amount of the Splitsville sound, but as Let’s Go shows, there’s far more to the band’s music than can be contained within a single niche.
