- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Fully digested, Hungry Bird succeeds as a grand epitaph and a birth announcement.
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Rather than picking up where End of Love left off, Hungry Bird sounds like an extension of previous solo outing Lose Big. Barzelay’s soft, depressed poetry is brushed across the canvas of his wispy songs as if he could float into the ether at any moment, becoming a ghost singing from the wizenened remove of the afterlife.
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What strikes me is that past Clem Snide albums had their stronger moments, but also their weaker ones, while Hungry Bird, for all its time in development, is more solid throughout, delivering its 10 pop songs with a consistency that shows the band continuing to develop its sound.
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Taken as a whole, the music on Hungry Bird is at times lovely, but also has the tendency to become unsettling.
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Hungry Bird is a charming and welcome return to form for Barzelay.
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When he’s in command, Barzelay seldom feels the need to be so subtle. But don’t sweat the details and many of the tracks will fall into place eventually.
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The melodies and arrangements, spiked with trombone and banjo, are simultaneously edgy and refined.
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It’s a challenging album, with few of the catchy moments that have marked the band’s earlier work, but one that seems to offer a subtle new reward with each listen.
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Q MagazineThis exquisitely downbeat album of droll heartbreak songs once again confirms that there is a certain knack to creating uplifting musical misery, and spectacularly-named frontman Eeef Barzelay has that knack in spades. [Jun 2009, p.119]
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While having Clem Snide back is cause for excitement, the album that nearly killed the band for good probably wasn't the best choice for a comeback vehicle.
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There is a resigned quality to Hungry Bird that stands in sharp contrast with the sprightly, slightly goofy tack the band took on 2001's career highlight The Ghost of Fashion.
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Hungry Bird is tired, unvaried and dull, possibly because the band’s dissolved and reformed many times since 1991, with singer/songwriter/guitarist Eef Barzelay the only constant.
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Under The RadarThe arrangements are too cumbersome to stand in service of the underdeveloped songs, relegating Clem Anide's delayed finale as further testament to their unfulfilled potential. [Winter 2009, p.70]