Eef Barzelay – Lose Big
If there is a better name in rock than Eef Barzelay I have yet to hear it. And just to be even cooler, I think the lady who sang backup on the first couple of Clem Snide albums was Shivaree’s wonderfully named Ambrosia Parsley. That is pretty much the pinnacle of the entire history of nomenclature – you can’t top that sort of thing.
Eef’s previous band, the aforementioned Clem Snide, were one of my favourite groups. Their heartwrenching ability to turn the screw during the saddest of songs was almost unparallelled. Eef’s first solo album, The Ballad of Bitter Honey, was a continuation of that: almost painfully confessional, and unflinchingly introspective.
That this should be similar is no surprise. Barzelay’s self-analytical nature almost reminds me of Woody Allen at times, in its relentless nature. There’s none of the irritating dicking about that Allen seems unable to keep in check, but that same kind of fearsome urge to examine your every failure and failing in minute detail seems to harrass Barzelay at every step.
Some of his best ever songs seem to stem from this urge, not least the brilliant Make Another Tree. It’s almost like he is accepting and embracing every minute catastrophe he has spent the rest of the album chronicling and surrendered himself up to the inevitability of his plight.
Unfortunately, there aren’t quite as many of these moments of genius as there usually are when Eef turns his mind to music. For all the brilliance of Numerology, Make Another Tree, Take Me, and the growlier likes of The Girls Don’t Care and Could Be Worse, there are a few stodgy numbers on this album. Somehow it doesn’t quite flow as perfectly as either Clem Snide records or Bitter Honey, and I’m not sure why.
The genesis of the album as a whole was rather difficult. It was almost the next Clem Snide album, was announced as such, then vanished, then finally reappeared under Eef’s name and now here it is. The flow of the record somehow seems to mirror this slightly stumbling path to release, but I don’t know if I could properly explain why.
Eef Barzelay – It Could Be Worse
Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree
Never mind the guy’s name, what the hell is going on with that album cover? “Psychotic bunny cuts loose with big stick”? I had to poke around on Amazon for a larger version to realise he’d pinched the guy’s gun and glasses, but I’m still not sure if the hunter is shot or just sleeping.
Almost the sort of cover that used to (before the internet came along) occasionally inspire me to make random purchases of albums by unheard bands on the basis that, well the psyche that produced that cover obviously has something going for it. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
I was always a massive sucker for nice cover art. It’s the one thing I miss the most, now we are in the digital age.
The bunny’s stealing the rifle and specs while the hunter sleeps in the shade of the tree.
The picture on the reverse of the album is sort of Part Two in the sequence, the rabbit is wearing the spectacles and chasing after the hapless – and now wide-awake – hunter aiming the rifle at him.
Very nice album cover indeed.