Eef Barzelay finds love. Eef Barzelay finds fatherhood. Eef Barzelay's band, Clem Snide, release an album about it. Well, that's roughly the chronology surrounding Soft Spot, the fourth album and second for indie label spinART by the self-described "Brooklyn art-country band." To properly communicate his muse, Barzelay and mates hired veteran producer/engineer Joe Chiccarelli (Frank Zappa, Hole, American Music Club, Tim Easton) and toned down the irony and discord in favor of something overall more tender and unguarded. It's a brave move -- going so soft, if you will -- and one that opens a new chapter in the story of Clem Snide. Barzelay checks in with MoMZine editor Neal Weiss on the phone from his home in Brooklyn, his 10-month-old son in the background, sometimes cooing, sometimes crying. "I might be slightly distracted because I have the baby with me," he says. "My wife's not home yet." That's so rock.
MoMZine: Why the Soft Spot? It seems that perhaps there was more thought put into it than the average album title?
BARZELAY: I like the double meaning of it, like when you love something you have a soft spot for it, and then also the soft spot on a baby's head, which I love as a metaphor for being open-minded, I guess, vulnerable, like your skull is still open. For a while I wanted to call the record Fontanelle, which is the soft spot itself, but I think Babes In Toyland already used that one. So a friend of mine said, "Why don't you just call it Soft Spot," and I said, "You're on. You've got yourself a deal!"
MoMZine: Is it meant to also hint at a mellower sound?
BARZELAY: Certainly. It is a softer record. I think we've probably made more mellow kinds of recording than anything else. I just sort of tend to write slower, sort of melancholy, quiet songs. So for this one, I didn't hold back. I didn't pull any punches…punches of softness.
MoMZine: The bio mentions "innocence, vulnerability, and hope" in this record. Is that stuff that comes out as softer, more introspective music as well?
BARZELAY: Yeah. The nice thing about Clem Snide, everyone in the band, we've all kind of known each other for a long time, we've been playing together for years and years, and I have the utmost respect for these guys as musicians. I think they understand the songs and they know what's gonna work with each song and come up with cool, interesting stuff to put there. It's not something we even need to talk much about. One of the things that Joe Chiccarelli brought to the table when I first started talking to him when we had demos, he suggested trying to bring in a more kinda Booker T. & the MG's and Stax kind of vibe, which was fine by me. And I think that kind of worked its way in. I think also having a new bass player Brendan Fitzpatrick, who plays electric bass, and was a lot more comfortable with that kind of Donald "Duck" Dunn sort of vibe. But we didn't talk about it that much really. It was in the air.
MoMZine: What about thematically? How much did your life changes color the project?
BARZELAY: The way the whole story kind of played itself out was, it's sort of connected with Ghost Of Fashion. Most of the songs for Soft Spot, they were already written when it came time to make The Ghost Of Fashion. I realized I could put them in two separate categories. One was the more selfish, narcissistic kinda of bad love songs. And then the other category was the more tender, selfless, generous kind of love songs. So Soft Spot became the more generous. But for me, the way I've kind of thought about in my own head was really a lot to do with selfishness and selflessness, and trying to find some sort of meaning and happiness in your life by sort of getting over yourself and committing to a different person and caring about someone else maybe more so than you care about yourself. So the Soft Spot is like a celebration of that, a celebration of selflessness. More than a few songs on the record are pretty straightforwardly kind of championing that idea. And yes, it had everything to do with getting married and having a kid.
MoMZine: When you strip away the irony and discord, you have some pretty naked, straightforward loves songs. Is that a challenge? In the hands of, say, Billy Joel, this could be pretty schmaltzy stuff.
BARZELAY: Certainly, lyrically I felt more vulnerable on this record. It's easier to hide behind sarcasm and irony. In a way it is more of a challenge to try and write really simple, sweet kind of songs, especially nowadays. I think all the schmaltzy stuff has almost kind of ruined those sentiments, you know? We've been so inundated by, not even *NSYNC and Billy Joel, but even just like TV commercials. Those sorts of sentiments have been bled dry of whatever kind of life they may have once had. So I think everyone is just conditioned to be a little leery of stuff like that. In that way it was a challenge.
But I think people don't change. People feel the same stuff and the same yearnings and longings that they've felt for the last, I don't know, 10,000 years. That never changes. So in that sense I wasn't afraid that I was being post-modern, or pre-modern, or all that kind of shit. I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna think about any of that -- not that I usually do any way -- I just wanted to see if I could write a sweet, simple love song and that's what I came up with.
MoMZine: A sweet, simple love song coupled with a more straightforward approach -- did you ever fear it being too normal?
BARZELAY: I don't really worry about that. At this point when we make records or when I write a song I don't thing about whether this is edgy or indie-rock-enough or too much or whatever because I think that my voice is just kind of fucked up sounding as it is. I don't have the prettiest voice in town so I think everything that I sing is gonna sound a little cracked. I have to learn to live with that.
MoMZine: The flipside to that is, that's a good thing. It makes you stand out.
BARZELAY: Some people really love my voice and some people are really kind of bothered by it and I just do what I do.
MoMZine: Does your voice and Clem Snide remind you of any particular music?
BARZELAY: Sometimes they'll be moments that might spark something. When we record I'm trying to be like Chet Baker [or] Jimmy Scott. In my head I kind of fantasize that we're making music that sounds as good as those Jimmy Scott records from the '50s. I know that the don't and they never will but I'm trying the best I can.
MoMZine: You've said that songs should be "invisible." What do you mean?
BARZELAY: [thinks] I have to try and find a good way to explain this…It's like the air. Music is invisible, and I love everything that goes along with the idea of invisibility. I love invisible things. I think we're sort of ruled by invisible things, by abstract ideas of God and love and death. I find that that's what I want to sing about, you know? I'm not interested in politics or the machinations of the world in that way. I like writing about nothing and nothingness and invisibleness [laughs]. That's gonna look really fucking weird on paper, like, what's that guy talking about?
MoMZine: Could you replace "invisible" with "spiritual?"
BARZELAY: I hate that word. It has so many awful connotations. I mean, all art is basically doing that, and if it's not then it's propaganda. You create this abstract thing or space or noise in a way to kind of commune with these abstract things that we're burdened with because we're conscious. It's not like I've made some wonderful discovery but that's just how I think about it for myself. It's fun to think about invisible things like time, death, God, and love. Those are the things that worth singing about.
MoMZine: How did you decide to hook up with Joe Chiccarelli?
BARZELAY: Originally my plan was to make Soft Spot in the same way that we made Ghost Of FashionBut some things changed. Jason [Glasser, producer and multi-instrumentalist] married a French girl and moved to France, so he wasn't around so much. So our manager had gotten Joe some demos and he'd been following the band for the last couple of records so he was a fan. And he just was real horny to make this record and lobbied real had for it. I had a couple conversations with him and I liked what he had to say and certainly I was very impressed by his resume. So we went for it and he was great.
MoMZine: How did he help Clem Snide?
BARZELAY: He really helped us a lot. I think he helped us shape the songs. I need a producer. I can't produce myself. When I get in the studio I think everything sounds terrible and I hate myself. Being in the studio, you have to kind of confront your limitations in a very intense way because the tape doesn't lie. So Joe was good with that, he helped us shape the songs a bit and certainly he got great sounds and he mixed the record so beautifully I think. I'm not sure why, I think he might have had some community service obligation, maybe unpaid parking tickets, he had to help some fledgling indie rock band instead of Elton John.
MoMZine: There's a note in the media kit that proudly boasts that the album was recorded "entirely analog." Why is that important to you?
BARZELAY: You know, I didn't make that boast. But… I'm not like some purist but I prefer to just work on tape, it's nice to just not have that computer involved because these days it's real hard to not have the computer involved because it just is, it's just the way of the future. But there's something real nice about just recording onto tape, psychologically, for me, instead of zeros and ones it's this actual chemical that's being scraped off a tape. I like that. Also, if you mix on the computer you end up kind of staring at the computer screen more than listening, everyone's mesmerized by these little colored blips and blobs. So we just wanted to just kind of kick it old-school in that sense and not deal with a computer. I mean there are times when it would have been kind of helpful, we could have spliced some stuff together but Joe's pretty amazing with splicing tape. I was always very impressed by how he cuts it and tapes it together and you'd never know it. That was pretty amazing.
MoMZine: That is old school.
BARZELAY: It's serious old school. I think he appreciated that too. Nobody likes to work on the computer, come on. Deep down everybody wants to work on some sort of vintage gear with two-inch reels rolling in the back.
MoMZine: You were briefly on Sire with the 2000 release, Your Favorite Music. What are the lessons learned from the major label experience?
BARZELAY: The thing I learned certainly was a marketplace-reality slap in the face. Up until then I never thought about money when you're making a song or playing a show. But with Sire, once they merged with London and these new people came in, when I actually got to talk to the new president, which took like months to finally get through to him, he was very candid. He said, "You're gonna sell what, 10-15,000 records. That's just not gonna make us any money so we're not interested. See you later." That was that. It's nothing that people don't already know -- the major labels expect you to sell a lot of records. They need to make a lot of money very quickly. There's absolutely no artist development anymore. That became painfully clear to me.
MoMZine: Guess that's not how you imagined in going in?
BARZELAY: In the beginning it was very exciting. I can't overemphasize how cool it is to sit there in Seymour Stein's office and have him tell you that you remind him of David Byrne. And he's singing old Roy Acuff songs to you and asking if you know that one. Turns out Seymour Stein's true passion is old country music. Who would have thought? It was cool. I like Seymour Stein and I have a lot of respect for him and it would have been great to sort of recreate the Sire Records of the late '70s/early '80s, unfortunately that was just not the case.
If some up and coming band asked me, "Should we sign with a major label," I would probably say no because it's like the house always wins. It's a bad deal. The way their deals are structured, you only get 14 cents on the dollar. But they have to make back all the money that the spend on you before you see any royalties and generally the money that's recouped is recouped at that rate. Every dollar that comes in, 14 cents of it goes toward your debt and they just keep the rest. That's just a fucking sucker's deal. You could, literally, if you made all the money or most of the money on the record, you could sell like 5000 records and you'd make more money than you would selling 500,000 records on a major label. And the thing that really bothered me about Sire was, they were always expecting us to do more. We had the same A&R guy as Guster, and Guster somehow are like marketing geniuses. They've sold hundreds of thousands of records pretty much just on their own. They have some kind of Amway type situation where they enlist their fans to solicit strangers on the street. I don't know how they did it but it's amazing. Our A&R guy was always like, "You guys need to be more like Guster." So it's like, "We're gonna come to you with hundreds of thousands of fans that we've busted our asses to earn and then you're gonna take all the money from it."
MoMZine: Are your expectations different now?
BARZELAY: Definitely. I don't have such high expectations. It would be great if I can just keep making records and make enough money so that me and hopefully the rest of the guys in the band as well could live off of. If we could get to that point that would be awesome. And it would be awesome if we could play theaters, maybe 1000-1500 capacity, where the sound is always so nice, as opposed to dingy punk rock clubs in the middle of nowhere that sound terrible. If I could get to that point I'd be pleased at punch, but beyond that I really have no desire or any expectations of becoming huge. At this point that seems really unlikely [laughs].
MoMZine: The lineup is now a more conventional four-piece -- no cello, no upright bass. How has that changed things?
BARZELAY: We have a more straightforward arrangement right now. I think it's still like the same sound though. Jason, the cello player, moved to France, but the great thing about having Pete Fitzpatrick kinda take his place is, they're both very similar types of musicians. They've both very adventurous and real sort of sonic wizards. Now Pete will bow the banjo or use the slide or e-bow on the guitar. He gets a lot of the same kind of sounds. So I think it still works. But, you know, just to keep things going we have to work with what we have.
MoMZine: Pete's one of those X factors that takes a sound to the next level. Those guys don't grow trees.
BARZELAY: It's amazing. I feel incredibly lucky to have two of those kinds of people interested in playing music with me.
MoMZine: That band was once called a "self-destructive punk rock trio." Is there still some punk in you at this point?
BARZELAY: Sure, whatever that means. I never knew what that meant exactly, you know? I think we're still a punk rock band, we're just a lot slower. We're like tired punk rock. Punk rock that needs a nap.
MoMZine: Parent punk rock. Daydreaming about naps.
BARZELAY: I know. That's actually one of the great things about going on tour is that I get to have uninterrupted sleep.
MoMZine: Speaking of, now that you're a parent, does your music have a different meaning now? Do you hear it differently?
BARZELAY: I don't think so. Sometimes that thought kind of gently blows through my mind that some day he'll be a teenager and he's gonna listen to music and be, like, "Wow, this is my dad's band." Is he gonna think it's cool or is he gonna think it's really gay? I have no idea. Whenever you start to think of them as much older, it just doesn't even work. I can't make that leap. I don't want to try to picture him older. I just want to try to keep everything in the moment with him because that's really what he's all about. That's a nice way to live, in moments.
