Clem Snide – You Were A Diamond

Late afternoon, just starting to rain, and you have to make a conscious decision whether to turn on the light and continue working, or turn on the stereo and let darkness settle over the room. You Were A Diamond, the debut album of New York band Clem Snide, is a perfect accompaniment to procrastination.

Songwriter Eef Barzelay’s unhurried musings depict simple moments in time and familiar peculiarities of relationships. The love songs are best at gentle intimacies and wordplay. In “Better”, he sings, “Hours are like little rocks stuck in your shoe/Ours is a love so strong, it’ll see us through,” accompanied by vigorous strumming and sawing on the cello — and perhaps even a saw (which is listed as an instrument in the credits). “I Can’t Stay Here Tonight” contains the most exquisite heartache imagery of the album: “I can’t stay here tonight/There’s blankets to fold, and love to make polished and silver/And stored away behind memory’s glass/We’ll take it out when we get lonely.”

Throughout, melodies veer into idiosyncratic instrumentation, keeping the warmth and sweetness of the lyrics from approaching sentimentality. The three-man band uses guitar, cello, violin and standup bass to stretch customary boundaries with enough discordance to give release to ordinary song structure. The lone cover, a freewheeling rendition of Hank Williams’ “Lost On The River” featuring banjo by Pete Fitzpatrick, is made sorrowful by Barzelay’s plaintive vocals.

“Chinese Baby”, the final song on the album, is just Eef accompanied by his guitar, so simple and tender: “So rub my stomach for good luck to pass that driving test/It’s hard, I know, green means go.” As in all these songs, the strength lies in the lyrics, and in the meditative spaces allowed between the words for breathing and reflecting.