The Split reigns supreme
I don’t know that there’s a better band than the Split in Ottawa right now. The band’s show at the National Arts Centre’s 4th Stage on March 25 was a triumph, and a strong declaration of musical intent.
Over 90 minutes of original music, it was plain to see that the Split has grown exponentially in both confidence and musical ambition since last year’s release of the debut EP Can’t Get Enough. To see the performance, led by brothers Matthew and Curtis Chaffey, was to recognize a musical maturation, and to comprehend the power and potential of the band.
“When Curtis and I started the Split we knew we needed a foundation, a sound that put us in the category of R&B/soul, but not nostalgic soul,” Matthew told me later.
“On Can’t Get Enough, on songs like Attitude and I Tried To Be Your Man, we accomplished that (goal) by incorporating modern sounds with more traditional ones.”
Matthew and Curtis earned acclaim in recent years as the Brothers Chaffey and their wellcrafted country rock — which makes their musical about-face into the Split so surprising.
The Chaffeys’ new sound has been labelled “neo-soul,” and while I’m not wholly certain what neo-soul is, I’m confident that the show at the NAC was a master class in it. The new and unrecorded songs leave behind the familiar comforts of any classic sound, and instead stride purposefully into areas more unique. The Split is finding and forging its own sound, experimenting with synthesizers and drum samples. “We have worked around some of the boundaries of the genre and will continue to do so with the new project,” Matthew says. “Our sound is constantly changing.”
The performing lineup (which differs from that on the EP) includes Matthew on vocals, Curtis on guitar, brothers Daniel and Michael Grewal on bass and keyboards, Matt Aston on drums, Terry Owen on saxophone and Nick Cochrane on trumpet. Every pond has its smallest fish, but I’m hard-pressed to identify the tinker in this school of rock. The NAC performance was polished and seamless in every position, despite the new songs being increasingly layered and complex.
The band is channelling the soul and R&B influences in new directions, and daring to bring in pieces of this or that from here or there. At times Curtis’s guitar was psychedelic, or flirted with rockabilly, or tossed off a riff straight out of ‘80s pop. “What you got to do,” Matthew howled over that latter riff, “what you got to do!” Judging by the response of the sold-out audience, what you got to do is get up and dance.
The new song Nobody Looks at Me That Way has Matthew’s raspy vocals soaring over his brother’s swirling guitar and Michael Grewal’s metronomic synth note. It was then I realized how far the Split has come in barely a year.
The band has a beguiling chemistry, which surely grows out of having two sets of brothers in the band and a therefore a double dose of that fraternal sense of music and timing. Appearance wise, Matthew is the older Chaffey, several inches taller and a bit bulkier. On stage he appears to be comfortable and relaxed, and he maintains an occasional but entertaining rapport with the audience. When he yelled “yeah!” I thought that he’s somewhere between Elvis and Michael Buble, with a side of Tom Jones.
Curtis has the refined air of a country music gentleman, with the nattily buttoned shirt, trimmed ’stache and restrained stage manner — the straight man to Matthew’s showman. The brothers may seem little alike, though, as Springsteen said, nothing’s thicker than blood on blood.
Daniel Grewal played bass on the EP, and brother Michael has since joined the band on synth duties. Having two Grewals “probably plays to the same dynamic Curtis and I share,” says Matthew, who explains Michael’s arrival
“Curtis and I played all the synth parts on Can’t Get Enough, and (we) needed someone to play them live. We were writing new material with synthesizers in mind so having someone their to facilitate our ideas is what we were looking for. That it happens to be a brother of a member is certainly a plus.”
Before they record the news songs, later this year, they want to “get a feel for playing them live. To see how the audience responds to the energy of them,” their PR rep tells me. By the end of the 4th Stage show the audience was on its feet with hands in the air. I realized that on a recent threeweek road trip across the musical American south, we saw nothing as good as the Split.
The Split plays the Blacksheep Inn in Wakefield June 6 and 7.