CHICAGO READER | APRIL 21, 2006 | SECTION THREE 5
[email protected] The Meter www.chicagoreader.com/TheMeter The Treatment A day-by-day guide to our Just Right Critic’s Choices and other previews friday 21 After a series of musical matchups that didn’t quite fit, EEF BARZELAY Debut solo albums tend three childhood pals put together their dream band, the 1900s. c toward the personal and/or confessional, so it was reasonable to expect that the songs on Eef Barzelay’s Bitter By Bob Mehr Honey (Spinart) would be more autobiographical than the ones he writes and sings for Brooklyn indie rockers Clem Snide. But he quashes that preconception with the disc’s opening line: “That was my ass you saw bouncing next to Ludacris.” Said ass belongs not to Barzelay but to a hip-hop video vixen who’s a nursing-school dropout and the daughter of a cleaning woman; on “Ballad of Bitter Honey” she explains how and why she manipulates men. Barzelay gifts her with just enough self-consciousness to lock her insights between wisdom and rationalization, his empathy never waning. Bitter Honey is just Barzelay and his acoustic guitar, which means his vocals are even more of a take-it-or-leave-it proposition than usual. Me, I say his affectations are more supple, and the tension between his nerdy nasality and confi- dent projection lends pathos to lines like “You looks so pretty when you have been drinking.” Prior to last year’s rocking and restless End of Love, Clem Snide had been growing qui- eter and more acoustic with each release, with Barzelay’s lyrics growing sunnier and less incisive.