Rarely has a sentence been formed to describe Clem Snide that didn’t include the words “cynical,” “sarcastic” or some variation thereof. It’s not untrue: A bit of snideness makes Snide snide, along with singer/songwriter Eef Barzelay’s diamond wit and unparalleled knack for making everyday melancholy shimmer. For the band’s fourth album, we’ll need to gather up some new adjectives, because something hoovered the tension and acerbity right out of Clem Snide, leaving unabashed sweetness in its wake. Where love once meant loneliness and longing, it now means comfort and joy; luckily for Barzelay, he’s got songs extraordinary enough to survive the switcheroo. What changed the smirk to a smile? The proof is right here, from the album’s title to its wife-and-baby-son dedication. The new Soft Spot (spinART) is a love letter to them both, and if he’s as nice at home as he is on record, Barzelay is a keeper. For the lady, we have “There Is Nothing,” a honeyed trot that could’ve been written and recorded by a dance band 50 years ago. For the boy, there’s “Happy Birthday,” filled with slushy, sweet wishes for a good life: “I hope that your friends are true and funny/And your girlfriends are sweet and wear tight pants.” With a few exceptions, the album is near tranquil, the capable band and seasoned producer Joe Chicarelli filling in space with a tastefulness that befits the tunes: Bells dot “All Green” and a cello accents “Forever, Now And Then.” Though the band has been tagged alt-country due to Barzelay’s slight twang, these are just tender pop songs, timeless enough to defy categorization.

Over the phone, MAGNET could hear the baby fussing in the background of the Barzelays’ Brooklyn apartment.

You’ve mentioned it in interviews, but most people who like your music probably haven’t heard the pre-first album [1998’s fantastic You Were A Diamond], rough-and-rockin’ Clem Snide. What were you doing back then?
The music we made back then was probably the closest I’ll ever come to pure, musical, visceral expression, especially by the time we had the sax player worked in. When we first started, it was more Lemonheads-y; I had written, like, three songs, and I was like, “Hey, you guys wanna play these three songs with me that I wrote?” “Weird” was one of those songs, which we still play. We were all really depressed and miserable and medicated and poor [laughs]. It was full of angst. It was really like group therapy more than anything, and it felt so good. I actually like the old stuff, it still sounds good to me, but if we would’ve continued doing that, I don’t know what it would’ve turned into. We’d probably be on John Zorn’s label now.

And now, with Soft Spot, you’ve really traveled to the other side of that. You’re angst-free.
I don’t know if I’m entirely angst-free, but maybe I’ve gotten comfortable enough with myself to write songs like that. Most of the songs I’ve written in the past came more out of being very uncomfortable with myself. I make music for people who don’t like themselves very much, but I’m always trying to be hopeful about it, and not be totally Mark Eitzel about it. Maybe that’s not a fair thing to say. It’s just about trying to laugh at your own misery and get over it a little bit.

You’ve been indelibly tagged as cynical, but on the new album’s “Happy Birthday” you actually come out and say, “Never have I been made less cynical.” Do you consider yourself a cynical songwriter and/or person?
That’s a good question, but it’s hard to answer. I was definitely very cynical, but I think a lot of that just has to do with self-loathing. I think I felt like I’d failed somehow in life, and I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. There was just this sense of failure, even before I started doing anything, I’d start off feeling defeated. So I think that sort of breeds it. But getting married and becoming somewhat successful at writing songs, and having a kid, you start to feel like less of a failure.

So have you rounded a corner with these new, happier songs, or is this more of a diversion?
I don’t think I could write another record like Soft Spot, so in that sense it’s probably more of a diversion. The initial sort of grand concept was that Soft Spot and [its predecessor] The Ghost Of Fashion were a sort of yin-yang kind of thing. At some point I realized that all my songs deal with love or the lack thereof. So the bad love songs ended up being The Ghost Of Fashion and these were like the good love songs. Those two records for me are like a grand-double-album concept or something. The next record,I don’t know how cynical or not cynical it’ll end up being, but a lot of the songs deal with death. I have a lot of death songs that I haven’t yet recorded. Death and God. The label and the manager love hearing that: “The next record’s gonna be all about death and sickness!” It’s real fun stuff to market.

Do you write as a reaction to other things you’ve written?
I think each record is kind of a reaction to the one before, maybe not so much in the songwriting but in the production. When we made Ghost Of Fashion, we definitely didn’t want to make another Your Favorite Music. We wanted to make something that was a little punchier, a little snottier, and a little more live and rockin’. You don’t want to make the same record over and over. So Soft Spot was kind of a reaction to Ghost Of Fashion, I guess. I’m sort of implying that there’s a lot of conscious thought behind these decisions, but it’s really more like an evolution than any sort of reaction.

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