Clem Snide Falls in Love

“Every song is a love song. That’s the only thing that’s really worth singing about,” offers Clem Snide frontman Eef Barzelay, explaining (or justifying) his decision to tone down the lyrical absurdity and pop culture acumen defining his band’s previous efforts in favor of a straightforward exploration of the much abused genre of love songs. “I think we’ve been inundated with really saccharine … Top 40 kind of love songs that make those words— … lovely sweet sentiments—it makes them feel kind of weird,” he continues bluntly, sounding like a sincerely convincing crusader for purity in the art of writing love. For a man who made his name musing over Dairy Queen and Elvis’ lost twin brother, this is quite a change in direction.

Their fourth album, Soft Spot, features more than a transformation in Clem Snide’s lyrical direction. Gone is the drowsy rhythm section that once set the tempo for 1999’s dourly dreamy Your Favorite Music, having been replaced by the more rock-minded team that formed the Technicolor backbone of 2001’s sonically full-bodied Ghost of Fashion. In turn, that more vigorously playful aesthetic has again given way to a newly fashioned mix of baritone guitar, banjo played with ebow, and adventurous sampling, all molded by veteran producer Joe Chiccarelli (Elton John, Frank Zappa, American Music Club) into something both restrained and a little soulful. Without a doubt, though, what people are most likely to notice is that Clem Snide’s sophisticated, delicate ratio of deadpan trivia and obscure philosophical profundity has been greatly reduced in favor of shooting surprisingly straight from the hip.

“It’s kind of the yin to The Ghost of Fashion’s yang,” says Barzelay. “My original vague sense of how to organize the songs was that The Ghost of Fashion would sort of be about bad love songs, … selfish, kind of vain, narcissistic kinds of ideas being explored. This one is sort of the opposite of that. It’s kind of sweet and selfless and thinking about stuff more from that side. And I suppose it was very much inspired by getting married and having a baby, which I did about nine months ago.” Unfortunately, gravity’s pull toward stability in his personal life has not always matched Barzelay and his bandmates’ artistic trajectory.

Starting out as an art-punk band in Boston in the early 1990s, Clem Snide dissolved in 1994—only to re-form in 1996, this time in New York City as a quirkily austere country-rock band. The distinctive mix of cool jazzy textures and Barzelay’s laconic drawl were a slow sell, and the members had to find other ways to support themselves while waiting for the industry to catch up to their sound. For Barzelay, this meant employment as a New York City tour guide. “The company I worked for was completely corrupt, and I … had to deal with a bus full of irate German tourists every day,” he reflects. “Not only that, but I had to inform and entertain them so they would give me a couple bucks. That’s … how I made my living, by tips. So it definitely helped me not being afraid of an audience. I … enjoy a rough, uncooperative audience because it’s more of a challenge, I guess.” No doubt, a valuable skill for a band whose résumé comes padded with a certain amount of assumed smugness.

Even more stressful was falling out with their label, Sire, during the great corporate absorptions of the late ’90s. “It was very typical of what happened to thousands of bands around that time, with the whole industry downsizing and merging, and we were on Sire and right as we turned in our album, they merged with London and all these new people came in and they didn’t give a f--- about Clem Snide,” he explains. “So, the record wasn’t put out for a year, and when it finally was put out, they didn’t do anything with it. So that sucked. I just want to know that people are doing something. I don’t expect to make lots of money. I don’t want some fabulous tour bus. The worst thing is just waiting. The endless waiting is unbearable. But it worked out OK in the end, because they actually let us keep the record, which is better than what happened with a lot of other bands.”

Once free of the gears of the industry machine, Clem Snide was able to chart a course more distinctively their own, signing with indie stalwart SpinArt for the tragically overlooked Your Favorite Music’s follow-up. Universally lauded, the rich sparkling tones of The Ghost of Fashion reached a wider audience, with a wider sonic palette that allowed its cultural cross-referencing to resonate all the more loudly. For Barzelay, however, the new territory was not reached without some trepidation. “So many people make such a huge deal about a song like “Joan Jett of Arc” or “Junkie Jews,” and at the time when I wrote the song, I don’t think I fathomed the implications of that,” he admits. “People react so strongly when you do that, it’s weird. It’s really a white phenomenon. Hip-hop does that—every five seconds hip-hop will string together these amazing double entendres, like pop reference … play on words kind of things. And no one in Vibe magazine comments on how Biggie is ironic or sardonic. Like, white people just freak out, man. I didn’t foresee that at all. They’re just words.” Whatever the case, those words proved the perfect foil for the producers of NBC’s hit sitcom, Ed, and the band soon found their music reaching a much larger audience than they had ever imagined when their “Moment in the Sun” became the show’s theme song for one season.

“That was a really strange and unusual thing for me,” Barzelay says. “I mean, it’s great. I count my blessings because I’ve been pretty much been living off that money for the last year and a half. It’s a little disappointing, because I don’t think they ever got behind the Clem Snide song,” he admits, explaining that the show eventually returned to the Foo Fighters song that had been used during its first season.

Even as the band seemed poised to make its greatest commercial inroads, it dealt with yet more adversity, as longtime members Jason Glasser (cello) and Jeff Marshal (bass) dropped from the touring lineup, greatly changing the sonic dynamic that colored the group’s early releases. And although the safest thing for a band on the verge of a breakthrough to do would be to create something akin to The Ghost of Fashion II, Barzelay has used his widening spotlight to make a substantial change in the direction of his craft.

“Yeah, definitely, it’s really straight-ahead,” he says of his new songwriting focus. “I’m curious to see how people respond to it. It’s still me; I’m not trying to do something that doesn’t feel natural to me. And I suppose that some of the lyrics will still seem kind of absurd to some people,” he finishes, sounding almost as if he relishes this opportunity to do the most rebellious thing he can at this stage in his career. It’s evident that he feels uneasy with the idea that the irony of his lyrics will ultimately become their defining feature.

“Everyone has to put everything into these little subgenres now,” he protests. “If you listen to the Rolling Stones, they did that version on Let It Bleed of “Honky Tonk Woman” called “Country Honk.” Mick Jagger is singing in this ridiculous southern accent. It’s ridiculous. But no one was like ‘Mick’s being ironic.’ People put things under this weird microscope much more than they used to. It’s just a rock ’n’ roll song.” For Barzelay, such focused attention embodies the modern desire to reduce everything to its elemental components, leaving the greater meaning submerged under deconstructed conjecture.

“Rock music has been around long enough that it’s crossed over into [being] approached in an academic kind of way,” he explains. “And now you’ve got these people who will teach a course on Bob Dylan’s lyrics in a university. Shit like that. People are thinking about it too much. I don’t think about it that much,” he explains, sounding somewhat indignant. “When I wrote … “Joan Jett of Arc,” [a song that deftly mixes poignant nostalgia with references to John Cougar Mellencamp and Sizzler steakhouses], people were like, ‘That’s so overly clever!’ I was like, ‘Really? That’s so stupid to me. It’s just a dumb song.’…They were just goofy puns, but that was the point. The idea was to make this sweet, somber song but have these goofy puns in it, to mix those together, I thought was kind of cool. But people were like, ‘He thinks he’s so clever.’ I really don’t.”

Barzelay bristles a bit at the idea that the September 11th terrorist attacks that changed life in his city have also shaped his new musical approach. “I don’t know if 9/11 has really changed anything, at least to the extent that the people who write for the Village Voice suggest it has. The death of irony––what does that even mean [laughing]? It makes no sense at all to me. I don’t think so,” he says. “It was awful and it certainly changed the way we feel about the world and what’s going on in the world. … Maybe it has. Not consciously, but maybe on an emotional level. I don’t know.” However he arrived at the unlikely place to where he’s a proponent of sincerity in the craft of love song writing, Barzelay gives no indication that he lacks resolve in completing his transition to heartfelt balladeer.

“Those kinds of words should be handled very preciously, in a way, because it’s a very precious thing. But when it’s used to sell McDonald’s or whatever, naturally you’re going to respond negatively and tend to kind of harden your heart,” he continues. “And certainly no one was more disillusioned than myself, so that’s what made it exciting for me, as well, to try to transcend that as much as I could, to try to write straight-ahead, simple, three-minute love songs, and have them feel fresh and not corny or cheesy or goofy or whatever.… I hope I succeeded.” In the end, no matter how far he has gone to separate his new songwriting persona from the sarcasm and irony of his previous work, Barzelay apparently can’t keep himself from dropping cryptic humor into his conversation, finishing with typically dry aplomb and false self-importance, “We’ll see how people respond to it. History will decide.”