{"id":30632,"date":"2026-01-23T05:30:44","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T10:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30632"},"modified":"2026-01-19T15:47:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T20:47:51","slug":"album-review-splitsville-mobtown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/23\/album-review-splitsville-mobtown\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Splitsville \u2013 Mobtown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One of the brightest spots on the tuneful end of the \u201890s alternarock scene was Greenberry Woods. Their infectious single \u201cTrampoline\u201d distilled all of the virtues of the very best power pop into three an a half minutes\u2026 which, of course, was the point. I have warm (if unverifiable) memories of seeing the band on one of the late-night talk shows, singing and playing the song while dressed in matching plum shirts, one of them with a wool hat. Like, yeah, you-know-who. Brilliant.<\/p>\n

But amid the nascent success of the group, half of the band \u2013 brothers Brandt and Matt Huseman \u2013 launched a side project. It wasn\u2019t supposed to wreck the Greenberry Woods, but by most reports, it kinda did. So the name of the project, Splitsville fit to a T. Their debut didn\u2019t set the world on fire (It was a collection of demos) but 1997\u2019s Ultrasound<\/i> delivered on the promise. Times changing as they do, Splitsville never broke through as a commercial force. But the band\u2019s run of albums \u2013 six between 1996 and 2003 \u2013 were critics\u2019 favorites of the they-shoulda-been-contenders variety.<\/p>\n

Things went quiet after that. Official word was that the group was merely on hiatus. And after a pause that made John Lennon\u2019s \u201chouse husband\u201d years look like a trip to the corner market, Splitsville is back with Mobtown<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The throbbing synth that opens the slyly-titled \u201cCold Open\u201d is a red herring; the song explodes out of the speakers, skillfully delivering both stripped-down garage-y rock and wide-screen attitude. The song is intentionally underwritten, with lots of woo-hoo vocals in place of lyrical philosophizing. They seem to just-wanna-rock, and that\u2019s more than fine.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Glorious Lie\u201d peels of sheets of roaring guitar, suggesting mid-period Posies (or, hey, Greenberry Woods with more crunch). Again, the little bits of synth add just the right texture without sanding off the jagged guitar edges. \u201cOn Federal Hill\u201d suggests what might have happened had Jellyfish teamed up with the short-lived Tally Hall (if you don\u2019t know the latter, look \u2018em up). And if there’s such a thing as progressive powerpop, \u201cGray\u201d is it. And for a true left-turn, \u201cFallsway\u201d sounds like a powerpop rethink of Becker, Fagen and their pals. No, really<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On Mobtown<\/i>, Splitsville achieve something they may not have intended. Each song evokes memories of a long-gone \u201890s act of superb quality (Owsley, Gladhands, Ginger, even R.E.M.) without ever sounding just like that band, and while maintaining an identity all their own. On this album recorded in 2025, the overall sonic aesthetic is inextricably tied to the sound of 30 years ago. But it\u2019s a timeless sound that \u2013 as Mobtown<\/i> makes plain \u2013 still has much to offer to current-day ears. A triumph. In fact, had I got ’round to covering this one sooner, it would have figured in my Best of 2025 list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the brightest spots on the tuneful end of the \u201890s alternarock scene was Greenberry Woods. Their infectious single \u201cTrampoline\u201d distilled all of the virtues of the very best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,49,55,65],"tags":[5835],"class_list":["post-30632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-of-list","category-new-release","category-powerpop","category-review","tag-splitsville","cat-8-id","cat-49-id","cat-55-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30632"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30636,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30632\/revisions\/30636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}