Kevin Bronson on May 20th, 2010

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Eef Barzelay gets more out of a couplet than most novelists get out of 300 pages. On his band Clem Snide’s new album, “The Meat of Life,” Barzelay – coming off two strong solo outings – achieves moments of uncommon tenderness and beauty, his warbly tenor inhabiting his characters’ fractured lives and emotional fissures.

“The Meat of Life,” released in February, comes on the heels 2009’s “Hungry Bird” – an album that was actually made largely before the band’s 2005 breakup. Here, he teams up with Brendan Fitzpatrick and Ben Martin to craft a warm set of folk-pop fables out of guitar, piano, horns, strings and, of course, the singer’s distinctive voice. From “I Got High” (a warm-and-fuzzy about connecting with a young crowd) to “Denver” (the story of a man who must leave his current relationship to be with a woman he impregnated in the Mile High City) to “Walmart Parking Lot” (a place the protagonist ends up the dawn after being dumped), the album is a lot like enjoying the view from an emotional roller-coaster.

• ||| Stream: “The Meat of Life”

We haven’t reached the midpoint of 2010 yet, but there is no album that’s gotten more play at Buzz Bands HQ than “The Meat of Life.” I was rather baffled by album’s middling reviews, but maybe those are the perils of putting out a gimmick-free folk-pop record these days. I caught up with Barzelay via phone from his Tennessee home right before Clem Snide embarked on its current tour – which lands at Spaceland on Saturday night.

Are you looking forward to heading out on tour after all these years?

EB: And where did all those years go? [Chuckles] Actually, I like touring a lot. Selfishly, at this point in my life touring is like a vacation for me. Drive around, eat at Waffle House, hang out with the guys, listen to music, and play some.

At one point not too long ago, it looked as if there would no longer be a Clem Snide.

EB: Around 2005, everything in the world of Clem Snide – which had already been very tumultuous and heartbreaking – kind of exploded. It was kind of a Book of Job. We broke up with an asshole manager, a nasty divorce that resulted in us losing our booking agent. Our label spinART went out of business too. Real indications that Clem Snide’s time was over. Pete Fitzgerald, who was in the band, we had a nasty breakup with him too. On the heels of so much heartache, I didn’t know why the gods were causing me to suffer so much heartache to do Clem Snide – I guess it must be some kind of Jew thing.

I never liked the name very much anyway. I came up with it when I was 19 and reading a lot of Burroughs. So I was happy to stop as Clem Snide and start by myself. I don’t know what I expected, but it didn’t have the same sizzle. When the label put out “Hungry Bird” [recorded mostly pre-breakup], it was impetus to reform. And with Brendan and Ben, it felt so tight.

People loved your solo records, though. And it seems to me that “The Meat of Life” might be closer to them than to the early band records.

EB: It has the sort of aesthetic I had with “Lose Big” … the more clean, more focused kind of work that I had kind of resisted. It’s “Here’s the song – melody and words presented in a nice space.” I don’t feel the need to get too far out sonically these days – that’s something 20-year-olds do anyway, and it feels contrived to me. I’m just giving you words and melody and that’s gotta be enough.

I don’t know, I’m grumpy about things. I’m trying to sell my house … I live in a world that has somehow made intellectual property worthless. The life lesson I’ve learned from all this is that we were given a bunch of money and it made us soft. It shouldn’t be this hard to just live … but maybe I’m stupid and I’m paying for it. But that’s probably inappropriate ranting …

Ranting is OK, but let’s talk about the songs then. The album has all kinds of tragedy and heartbreak and it’s very anecdotal. Is it personal?

EB: Emotionally, it is. The motivation behind it is that I feel like a failure a little bit. I feel like I’ve been rejected. Plus, everybody I know was going through a divorce or some sort of crisis, so I just took that and ran with it.  But no, not all those stories are about me. The record kinda bugs my wife because she keeps getting asked if those songs are about me. It’s been tough on her, and I apologized. But at this point in my songwriting, I just try to channel people, be more like a vessel. I pick at scabs.

I can see how the wife might have been concerned when she heard “Denver.”

EB: That song fucks with people’s heads. People will come up to me and offer their condolences – they can’t seem to grasp the fact that it’s made up. But that’s what’s great about songwriting; it just has to answer to its own logic.

I was drawn to “I Got High.” My first concert was in Normal, Illinois – although it was before Sufjan Stevens was born.

EB: That song was an inspired moment. I was on tour with Ben Folds, one of those nondescript college town tours where I wasn’t getting treated particularly well, and it was November. Cold and gray. I’d been playing in arenas to college kids who seemed so cold and indifferent, but in Normal that night, the show was in a theater and it was warm and beautiful. So it was written there, but with all the other [shows] in the back of my head.”

It sounds so paternal, that lyric “This song goes out / to all you beautiful / American girls and boys.”

EB: Maybe it’s not a midlife crisis song, but it’s definitely a song from somebody who’s on the other side. I’m not even sure I understand where [the girls and boys] are coming from anymore. I listen to college radio these days and I can’t stand to hear a 20-year-old’s voice. When did music get so pretentious?

||| Live: Clem Snide, supported by the Heligoats, performs at Spaceland on Saturday.

Photos by Alix Barzelay

||| Stream: “The Meat of Life” via Spotify