When you name your band Clem Snide, it's fair for people to expect a healthy mix of both twang and sarcasm.  And anyone who gets the reference—Clem Snide was the name of the private eye in William S. Burroughs' novel "Cities of the Red Night," considered by many to be his best, most imaginative work—will know to expect lyrical dexterity that goes well beyond standard pop pap.

With Eef Barzelay, the Clem Snide frontman who slapped that moniker on the jazz/punk trio he formed in Boston in 1991, you get all of it—sweetness, sadness, and a musical adventurousness that has taken Barzelay from punk in Boston to alt-country in Brooklyn to folk rock in Nashville.

The alt-country iteration of the band rose from the ashes of the dissolved punk outfit, inspired by Barzelay’s reconnection in 1996 with Jason Glasser, who had played bass with him in Boston, but was then studying cello in New York.

Not long after, the resuscitated Clem Snide was playing gigs around New York City, only reinvented with a new twang, alternately drawing comparisons to Hank Williams and Nick Drake, only with more cello.  They released their first album, "You Were A Diamond," on the independent label Tractor Beam Records, and over a series of follow-up discs, the band's evolving sound, and Barzelay's songwriting, at turns strikingly honest and splendidly sarcastic, attracted a growing following.

The band's moment in the sun came in 2001 when "Moment in the Sun," off their album "The Ghost of Fashion," was used for the theme song in the second season of the short-lived NBC comedy, "Ed."

Barzelay, who moved to Music City in 2004, released his first solo effort, the self-produced, all-acoustic "Bitter Honey," in 2006, delivering a disc of spare, emotionally raw tunes that thrive on the strength of his acoustic guitar and his singular voice.

But really, does the Israeli-born, Jersey-raised Barzelay feel at home in Nashville, the capital of country music?

Absolutely.  Once asked by the Artrat, the UK-based contemporary art website, "How would you define 'country'?," Eef replied, "A young boy from Israel grows up in suburban New Jersey listening to Rush and Iron Maiden then goes to college in Boston and starts writing songs. That's 'country.'"