Split Habit - Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (Cover Artwork)
Staff Review

Split Habit

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (2004)

Double Zero


WOOOAAH!

  • This sounds like Simple Plan and the All-American Rejects had a campfire jamboree.
  • The vocalist's voices are too whiney.
  • The lyrics are clichéd and adolescent.
  • They didn't give me the iPod Mini.
…but I like them!

If you described this band to me I would easily write it off as something I didn't like. Nonetheless, I can't help but sing along with all the "oh's" and "whoa's" contained in this fifty minutes of power-pop bliss. Secretly, I am dancing along to this band's second full length album as I type of this review. Sean O' Keefe has done for Split Habit what he's done with Motion City Soundtrack and Spitalfield – which is taking a sound that's been beaten like a dead horse and jumpstarting it into something pleasurable and enticing!

I'm not trying to be a lazy journalist, but their press kit perfectly sums up the album, "[it] drips profusely with crunchy power chords, irresistible hooks, sing-along choruses and candy coated harmonies." There are ten songs following that formula, which includes a delightful rendition of Hall and Oates' "Maneater."

"Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is" isn't perfect, but this Chicago trio isn't shooting for that. They're playing rock ‘n roll and having fun and I'm joining in on the amusement by listening.