A breakup may not be the time to pull out that "it's not me, it's you" chestnut, but it also might be your last chance to leave 'em with something to remember. Such is the balancing act at play on Hungry Bird, veteran countrypolitan rockers Clem Snide's bow-out that wasn't. A few years back, after a decade and a half as Clem Snide, songwriter Eef Barzelay announced the end of the Clems, while his own solo output (never far from the Clem Snide aesthetic anyhow, given Barzelay's strong presence and Clem Snide's oft-changing lineup) multiplied. A final album of Snide songs, recorded around the time of Barzelay's 2008 sophomore solo effort, Lose Big, had reportedly been laid down around the same time; now it surfaces as Hungry Bird. One twist: In December, Barzelay announced that Clem Snide had patched things up and are giving this band thing another go.
There is a resigned quality to Hungry Bird that stands in sharp contrast with the sprightly, slightly goofy tack the band took on 2001's career highlight The Ghost of Fashion. Gone, too, is most of the twang that characterized a good chunk of the band's sound, replaced with a series of spare, watery soundscapes that threaten to spin out into either a Pablo Honey-style fiery crash or, erm, "adult contemporary." This record does indeed sound wounded, and Barzelay's songs feel as if they might be his last set for a while, no matter whose name wound up on the spine. (A little digging suggests Hungry Bird details some sort of post-apocalyptic vision. I didn't get that on my own, nor I suspect will you; awfully dull-seeming end times, anyhow.)
But "wounded" isn't the best look for a sometimes-humorous band who found early fame warming up collegial sorts at Ben Folds solo shows. A decade ago, Barzelay might've turned one of the ultra-earnest brooders here into a "Joan Jett of Arc", slipping just a hint of light and pathos into an otherwise stone-faced ballad. There's just not much levity at play on Hungry Bird, and-- as occasionally overdone as it is throughout the Clem Snide back catalog-- it's funny just how much you miss it when it goes away.
"Me No" kicks things off with a slack-strummed guitar and splattering drums, but the song itself-- a series of pleas, however impassioned-- falls apart in a series of "bah-bah-bah"s. Highlight "Born a Man" has a nice, easy way about it and some of the set's best lyrics, but it's bogged down by a Bruce Hornsby-like piano and an all-too-easy lyrical climax. It goes on like this, bouncing between mood pieces and more standard folky fare, with Barzelay doing precious little to invoke either the "see what I did there?" lyricism of old or revealing much about whatever's so clearly bothering him.
Lambchop associate and Nashville producer of note Mark Nevers surprisingly had a hand in this one (as he did on 2005's End of Love), though the production's credited to Barzelay himself. The sound of Hungry Bird shares more than a studio rat (and a bunch of musicians) with Kurt Wagner's ever-changing crew, but whereas Lambchop find a way to make 300 people sound like just the right number, the six musicians who comprise the Clem Snide of Hungry Bird sound as if someone's halved their efforts. A few End of Love songs share this sparse approach with Hungry Bird, but that's just it: a few. I get that these songs are meant to sound "intense," what with all the strategic volume bumps and Barzelay opening up his throat as minute four turns to minute five. But virtually all 10 tunes here share the same threadbare twilit veneer, and it causes the album to feel far longer than its 46 minutes.
It doesn't take long for the best of Hungry Bird's vocal melodies-- "Burn the Light", "Born a Man", "Hum"-- to become familiar, even though the same can't be said for the lyrics themselves. That's an admittedly odd bit of encouragement for a band like Clem Snide, who once got by on so much more. Alt-country is all too often such serious business, so it was nice to have a band around who might elicit at least a simper now and again. It takes no stretch of the imagination to tie the dour tone of Hungry Bird to the apparent split in the wake of its creation, and maybe its unpleasant bitterness is just a temporary side-effect of Barzelay's heartburn. Whatever it was, though, it wouldn't have been the first breakup in history due to a lack of interest, and that's ultimately the impression left by Hungry Bird.
