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He’s On The Phone
6:24 pm on March 5th, 2008 by Matthew LawrenceThe Nashville-via-Brooklyn-via-Boston band Clem Snide got their name from a character in Naked Lunch, so it shouldn’t be that surprising that nerdy frontman Eef Barzelay sounds like a really stoned beatnik. That is, unless you’ve actually heard any of the nasal sad-sack ballads he’s written over the course of seven albums (five with the band, one solo, and one coming out on April 15th that I’ve seen credited to both.) Amd that’s not even getting into the man’s interpretations of songs like Richie Valens’ “Donna,” Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” or Christmas standby “Joy To The World,” which he used to end 2006’s Bitter Honey album.
So it’s
crazy listening to his recent appearance on
Phoning It In, the radio show where musicians play songs over the phone. Turns out when he’s having a conversation he really sounds like a stoned beatnik after all, or possibly the kind of guy who’d call you at four in the morning with some scary new theory about the apocalypse. Which, considering that his songs have titles like “Messiah Complex Blues” and “Jews For Jesus Blues” and “Evil Vs Good”, might not actually be out of the question.
Detractors might accuse him of whining, but at his best Barzelay walks a thin line between cultural awareness and self-awareness that prevents the bespesctacled crooner from sounding too wimpy. Despite the fact that almost all his songs are mopey country ballads–including the one about David Icke and the one about Corey Feldman and the one about doing whip-its with a first love–Barzelay has an interesting degree of ironic detachment that always keeps things interesting.
Listen! phoning it in
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March 5th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
When I was in high school when Clem Snide shows consisted of old people and not hipsters….I would drive all over New Jersey seeing Eef play solo at old Record Stores. Once he lit my cigarette, he sounded like a stoner then too.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:12 am
the one time i ever saw them live (which was the first time i ever heard them) it was when they opened for the throwing muses reunion. so it wasn’t so much “hipsters” as “hipsters of yesteryear who could occasionally be persuaded to go to lupo’s so they could compare their dyed bangs with kristin hersh’s dyed bangs.”