Allow us to introduce you to Split Feed, a punk rock quartet from Newcastle. Though they’ve been together as a band since 2014, they are new to us and we wanted to get to know them better through a friendly Q&A! Split Feed are Joe Willis (vocals & guitar), Will St Claire (guitar), Brad Mclean (drums), and Adam Lindsay (bass). Their most recent release “Homesick” adds to a string of singles they’ve released along with their Late Bloomer EP released in 2017.
Three of the four members (Joe, Brad, and Will) met in high school music class, beginning by playing covers together and what they describe as ‘very, VERY bad jazz’. This ultimately progressed into the punk rock of Split Feed in 2014. Bassist Adam completed the band in 2016.
Sharing that their influences keep changing as they continue to explore music, Split Feed credit bands like Billy Talent and blink-182 for impacting their sound from the early days, with influences from Luca Brasi, Tiny Moving Parts, and PUP most recently.
As for key albums that had an impact on the members of Split Feed musically:
Will – Panic! At The Disco – A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
Joe – Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine
Brad – Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stadium Arcadium
Adam – Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
Typically starting with a simple chord/chord progression that catches their attention during practice, the usual writing process is for Joe to then takes it away to write. This is further pieced together at rehearsals. Though it’s usually a long process, they feel it’s ‘worth it in the end’. They share with us that there’s an EP in the works, planned for release in 2019.
Specifically talking about “Homesick”, Split Feed had endeavoured to create their heaviest track yet. Emotional heaviness came into the equation too, as the track touches on broken friendships/relationships and the feelings that come when they are over. “For the music video we wanted to create something raw and real that would fit the hard-hitting aspects of the song. We had the idea for the burning cupcake for a while for the single art, and then on the day of filming we worked around that as the main point of the video. It’s very literal as we filmed it at Adam’s home! Our friend James Rhodes is really good at working with film cameras and creating an old school type of look and we think he killed it with the clip.”
When thinking about highlights over the lifetime of Split Feed (so far), the quartet consider their win of the triple j competition to play at Groovin’ The Moo festival in April to be ‘the big one’ for them. “But selling out our last three Newcastle shows have been so much fun, and also supporting The Living End last year was huge!”
Right now the band are partway through their Homesick tour, having supported Perspectives earlier this month with two sold out shows. They describe their live performance in three words as: Sweaty, Loud, InYaFace (well that’s cheating..), so it might be worth checking out!
Keep up with Split Feed via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SplitFeed/
