Indie rockers covering hip-hop songs as smarmy, acoustic balladeers is just not funny anymore. It all seemed innocent and fun when Dynamite Hack blazed from car stereos that summer, but by now this gimmick is needless rib-poking at the whole aesthetic embodied by rap music videos. However these videos might appear from the glass houses of the indie scene (excessive, misogynist, a bad influence on the kids, whatever), they shouldn’t serve as the knee-slapping intro to some ironic white guy’s song about a poor woman.

While the “Ballad of Bitter Honey” is not as patently problematic as Ben Folds’ “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” it cheapens what would be another solid addition to Barzelay’s admirable collection of detailed, sad, and lovable characters. With this track he covers ground thematically richer than that of Clem Snide’s disappointing End of Love, but still using its now-tired songwriting techniques. Barzelay likes to get us chuckling about something like “Tiny European Cars” only to pull back the curtain for the poignant and insightful part of the story. This has recently earned him AAA-radio play and recognition from polite society that he is both “humorous” and “sensitive,” notions that this song will only reinforce.

But it makes my stomach turn to think of some guy in a Saab smiling as he hears Barzelay sing, “That was my ass you saw bouncin’ / Next to Ludacris.” It is this needless, cheap sub-plot—which, for the record, has nothing to do with the rest of the song—that makes the interesting second half of the “Ballad” seem snickeringly ironic rather than the astute meditation on gender and racial inequality that it could be. The jokes are always funnier when they move us toward a truth, but here the joke is on Eef. Dude, you should just know better. "Bitter Honey" was poised to be Joan Jett of Arc’s wiser, older sister, but instead she plays like her third cousin twice removed. Embarrassing.

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