While the ghastly choice of moniker makes other such unfortunately-named groups — Jethro Tull, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rilo Kiley — seem positively erudite by comparison, there’s nothing bumpkin-like about Clem Snide. Granted, frontman Eef Barzelay’s nasal vocal bleat may sound more “Hee-Haw” than “Masterpiece Theatre”. Yet End Of Love offers some of the brainiest pop this side of Elvis Costello or Randy Newman. Barzelay’s dry humor, acid tongue and withering yet empathetic take on life combine to make the band’s fifth album (mostly recorded in Nashville with Lambchop’s Mark Nevers) a literary delight.
In the boom-chicka-boom ditty “Jews For Jesus Blues”, Barzelay’s narrator immediately regrets his conversion: “But I only felt guilty that He died on the cross/Now that I’m found, I miss being lost.” A retort arrives forthwith on “God Answers Back”, a 1950s-style ballad in which an uncharacteristically droll Lord advises, “If you get everything you hope for/Then I will have to punish you.”
Elsewhere, a tattered tango (“Something Beautiful”) finds Barzelay admitting through gritted teeth to an unnamed source of misery, “You make me wanna break/Something beautiful.” And while the title cut is, sonically, an upbeat, early R.E.M.-styled rocker, its lyrics are sternly cynical: “No one will survive the end of love.”
You don’t have to know that his mom and mother-in-law died before the album was made to see that Barzelay’s coming from a dark place. By finding the silver linings — or punchlines — in the exorcisms, however, he’s never less than cathartic.
