Singer/songwriter Eef Barzelay (aka Clem Snide) has had a rough go the past decade – his band fell apart, his marriage collapsed, and he lost his house and declared bankruptcy. Barzelay follows-up 2015’s Girls Come First with his first album in five years, Just Beyond, a gentle indie-folk album that finds him pondering existential questions of hope, depression, identity, perception, God and the afterlife with humility, composure, humor, and thoughtfulness. Production for Forever Just Beyond was overseen by Scott Avett with recording taking place primarily on Avett’s farm in North Carolina with bassist Bill Reynolds (Band of Horses) and drummer Mike Marsh (The Avett Brothers), with finishing touches laid down in Nashville with contributions from fiddler Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show) and cellist Joe Kwon (The Avett Brothers). Album highlights include: the gorgeous, bittersweet song “Roger Ebert”; the quiet acoustic confessional “The Ballad of Eef Barzelay”; the bare-bones track “Denial”; a song that translates the metaphor of a breaking wave into quantum physics on “The Stuff of Us”; the breakup song “Sorry Charlie”; and the upbeat but troubled “Don’t Bring No Ladder.” The Clem Snide album Forever Just Beyond is a profoundly personal set of songs that will bring a little light in these dark times. – Written by JFelton
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