The Meat of Life can be considered a sort of a comeback record for Clem Snide. It's not a comeback in the sense of being a return to form or a drastic departure, but it is a promise that prolific frontman Eef Barzelay won't have to go it alone again. Hungry Bird, a shoulda-been swan song that was initially abandoned mid-record because of the band's slow dissolution, was issued a year ago with news that Clem Snide would press on. So while Meat of Life should get a little burst of energy coming from a band returning after being so near the end, it winds up being a plodding next step from a group that once got by on its smirk and quickness.
Lambchop's Mark Nevers again handles production duties, and much like Hungry Bird, Meat of Life finds Clem Snide deserting wily, irreverent arrangements and witty aphorisms in favor of a more earnest and streamlined sound. Even Barzelay's voice-- once bursting with character, unafraid of the occasional pubescent crack or gargle-- now sounds subdued and polite. Hungry Bird was ostensibly about a break-up, and while this record digs into love and lust from a few different angles, it's hard not to notice that the guy sounds not only a little burned, but just plain burned-out. Even from its title, "Wal-Mart Parking Lot" might seem pretty over the plate, but Barzelay plays it straight: She bails, he drives all night and ends up watching the sunrise outside of a Supercenter, and he still can't manage to find any irony in the commerce of love.
The band also sounds like the wind has been taken from its sails, rarely finding a way outside of the same waltzy, indie-pop ballad structures. Most of the songs have such a predominant lite-rock FM quality to them that even the occasional lilt of a lovely cello part or the blast of a trumpet (far too rare here) is unable to rise above the din. Even the when the songs do branch out, it's usually in an unbecomingly strange direction. The album bookends "With Nothing Much to Show for It" and "Anita" (the latter of which boasts an "Anita"/ "I need ya" rhyme, just in case you wondering how completely uninterested Barzelay is in being clever) have a weird and lonely calypso vibe, sounding like ballads for the only guy at Sandals without a date to the Luau. Strangest of all might be the title track, a lucid bit of blacklit space folk that somehow manages to make the cosmic beauty of conception sound frighteningly repulsive: "To grow the meat of life, I will plant my seed".
It's disappointing that Clem Snide seem to have nestled into a very comfortable, moth-eaten place, and it's sadder still when you can hear Barzelay's sense of humor worming it's way in, most notably on "I Got High". Dedicated to "all you beautiful American girls and boys", "I Got High" is a warm, nostalgic look at those fumbling adolescent escapes into love and drugs. It's wistful, in part because you can sense the "old Barzelay" returning. That tug in his voice makes me think that he misses that guy a little bit, too.
