clem snide review

Saw Clem Snide and Califone at The Black Cat last night. Califone’s got a nice rustic, rhythmic thing going on, at times sounding like African drum music with a sitar. They’ve got two drummers; when I think two drummers, I always think of Allman Brothers-style rawk authority, but Califone’s more delicate than that.
Clem Snide was in fine form. Lead singer Eef Barzelay seemed a little tipsy at show’s start, but sobered up toward the end. (I’ve never seen them live before, so I can’t say if that’s just Eef’s schtick.) The band seems to have acknowledged what crabwalk readers learned some time ago: that their last album sucked. They only played two tracks from it all night (“All Green” and “Action”). In contrast, if memory serves, they played six tracks off The Ghost of Fashion (co-winner with Spoon of the coveted 2001 crabwalk.com Album of the Year award), three from Your Favorite Music, and a couple from You Were a Diamond — all far superior discs. (They even played my friend Kim’s favorite song, “Long Lost Twin.”)
Thankfully the new, unreleased songs they played were strong, including one about Enrique Iglesias’ mole (“That’s the kind of song you write when you read Us Weekly,” Eef said). The cover of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” was strong, too. It was kind of fun watching all the dedicated indie-kids sing along, obviously knowing every word.
Trivia alert! Eef is evidently a nickname based on his real name, Ifar.