Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time there was a band from Brooklyn named Clem Snide. Being a band, Clem Snide made an album and released it on a little label called Tractorbeam (1998's You Were a Diamond). A corporate record company heard the album, liked it, and the band got signed to a major label.

In May of 2000, Clem Snide released their second album, Your Favorite Music, on Sire Records. But here is where the story gets rather fuzzy, my friends, because it seems as though Sire deserted the gentlemen of Clem Snide and their quirky country-inflected record soon after its release.

However, thankfully for all of you who didn't get the chance to hear this pretty little gem on its first go, SpinArt Records has re-issued Your Favorite Music for your listening pleasure.

The band's record company difficulties and eventual triumph are a fitting parallel to the sounds of Your Favorite Music. The melodies aren't revolutionary; in fact, many of the songs are strangely familiar. But they are familiar in the comforting way that simple, good rock songs are familiar, in the way in which they sound as if they could have been recorded in 1957 or 2000.

By making use of the unusual stand-up bass, cello, guitar, and drums format, Clem Snide combines compelling, sparse musicianship with unusual subject matter to form engaging and sometimes haunting tales of loneliness and aloneness.

Lead singer/guitarist/songwriter Eef Barzelay has an uncanny ability to craft stories through idiosyncratic fragments of life and the clever turn of a phrase. His nasal, affected voice wavers appropriately between matter-of-fact sing-speak, enchanting lullabies, and dynamic cries of desperation throughout the album. He humorously and poignantly captures his own self doubt with lines like: "Your beautiful African friend / Next to him I feel so white."

In addition to Barzelay's fantastic vocal delivery and unusual storytelling ability, Jason Glaser's cello and keyboard, playing along with stand-up bassist Jeff Marshall and drummer Brad Reitz's simple, often quiet, instrumental work, creates melodic lines like molasses–sweet and slow.

Barzelay's guitar work only figures prominently on a couple of the sing-along tracks on the album, like "Messiah Complex Blues," where the finger-picking and three-chord strumming serves as a setting for the proclamation, "I wouldn't die for your sins."

But, if you are only to ever hear one song by Clem Snide, I suggest that that song be "I Love Unknown," which recounts the tale of a young man who leaves the woman he loves, the job his dad secures for him, and the name he was given at birth for the allure of the unknown.

In this framework, Clem Snide tells the ultimate tale of suburban disillusion in 2 1/2 minutes of pure pop pleasure. With the final verse it is revealed that "the doctor asked him what he was afraid of / just what was he running from / and he said it's not a fear of success or of closeness / but of going through life feeling numb."

Clem Snide's second album features subtle smirk-causing humor and sparse reflection garnering moments, and through its ever-truthful stories and plain and lovely instrumental work Your Favorite Music succeeds in fulfilling the prophecy of its title.

Clem Snide, Your Favorite Music, Spinart. Re-released March 19.