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: My friend Mason from Nashville’s own Ole Mossy Face turned me on to this record. I love Kyle Field’s words, like a less fussy Will Oldham, so natural and loose. It’s like the other day when I was changing my baby girl’s diaper, a little speck rolled out, which I naturally assumed was baby poop, but instead turned out to be a ladybug.
“Fall Flood”:
https://magnetmagazine.com/audio/FallFlood.mp3
