Clem Snide

***REISSUED ON VINYL!!! You Were A Diamond is a record that is both haunting and haunted (that cello, the way it mimics the scraping of fragmented skull against fragmented brain). Like paintings done on glass instead of canvas, fragile and yet somehow more luminous. CLEM SNIDE's music is impossible to reduce to a literal description—can’t call it alt-country when there’s a cello, call it lo-fi even though you’re able to hear every note, call it folk, even though there is a predominant electric guitar. All of this adds up to the most unlikely of sonics. Call it CLEM SNIDE. Or maybe call it the missing link between John Cale and Hank Williams. Even the band name, Clem Snide, sounds like a demented Flannery O’Connor character, But it’s actually from a William Burroughs novel. Originally released on CD in 1998 and then again in 2002. Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork.