It’s vacation time already? Awesome! Time to kick back, relax, and…oh, wait, I forgot: this is only a part-time writing gig, and I still have to keep doing my full-time writing gig. Oh, well, at least this means I get a bit of a break from going completely insane on Monday afternoons as I try to finish up my column on time (and inevitably fail miserably at it).

Our commander in chief, Mr. Giles, has told me on several occasions that I shouldn’t feel bad about skipping a week here and there with “Hooks ‘N’ You,” since he knows how much I have to do for Bullz-Eye. Thing is, I enjoy writing this column for the same reason all of us here at Popdose offer our contributions to the site: not because we have to, but because we want to. It’s one big ol’ labor of love, folks. Plus, really, where else on the ‘net could I have the flexibility to write a column that spotlights albums ranging from George Burns to Kylie Minogue?

What it’s also given me, however, is the opportunity to have conversations with several of the artists whose records have provided me with a lot of great spins over the years. I realize that the beauty of having a regular column on a website is that people can just click on the appropriate tag and pull up every single one of your previous works, but when I looked back myself, I realized that A) I’ve talked to a lot of great artists since kicking off this column in January ‘08, and B) even *I* got bored clicking through a year’s worth of columns. So for your easy access, here’s a quick list of the folks who were kind enough to talk with me either by phone or E-mail for “Hooks ‘N’ You” in 2008:

(more…)

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:

“Splitsville Spirit Song“

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.

(more…)