When Clem Snide began recording albums more than a decade ago in New York, the band’s clever alt-country songs often came across as an ironic take on Americana. Everyone knows you can’t do country music in the big city, and where did Israeli-born singer/guitarist Eef Barzelay get that twang from, anyway? After years of slogging through the indie-rock touring circuit, a band breakup and a move to Nashville, the reunited Clem Snide has earned the all-American desperation and heartbreak that lies in the marrow of its latest album, The Meat Of Life, out this week on 429 Records. Barzelay is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
Barzelay: I was a hapless teen going through my changes in suburban New Jersey when I discovered this show. The Young Ones was on MTV of all places, late Sunday night, and it really helped me get through the ’80s, which I did not love. Surreal, absurd and hilariously violent, they would make very British references—that I didn’t get—to things like “the complete memoirs of Donald Sinden.” Also, they always had live music like Motörhead. Video after the jump.
